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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

CIiap._:.'___. Copyright JVo 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



" BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS " 

FROM 

BULWER-LYTTON 



4197G 

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i"*\AL Copies R€ce««/eo 
SEP 1 1900 

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COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY 
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74^41 



PEEFACE. 

Of all the great classical writers of 
the century not one has given utter- 
ance to so many lofty thoughts and 
ennobling ideas as the first Lord Lyt- 
ton, still so familiarly known to us by 
his family name of Bulwer-Lytton. 
Witty, epigrams, sententious sayings, 
flashes of keenest insight into the 
workings of the human heart, are 
found so abundantly in every work of 
his that the difficulty has been one of 
selection rather than of search. 

The message of Bulwer-Lytton to his 
age was a strong protest against pessi- 
mism, cynicism, cant and every form 



vi PREFACE. 



of materialism, that true greatness in 
life could only come through nobility 
of purpose and that great aims digni- 
fied even little men. The Ideal can 
never be reached in this Avorld, but 
nevertheless men and women are ever 
the better for striving after it. The 
temptations of life are its true trials, 
life is a battlefield Avliere all may 
acquit themselves and where no death 
is ignoble save to him who turns his 
back on the conflict. 



JANUARY. 






Jcmuary 1st. 
Though Hope be a small child, she 

can carry a great anchor ! 

Harold. 

Jcmuary ^d. 
If a woman has once really loved, 
the beloved object makes an impene- 
trable barrier between her and other 
men ; their advances terrify and revolt 
— she would rather die than be unfaith- 
ful even to a memory. Though man 
loves the sex, woman loves only the 
individual. 

Ernest Maltravera, 

January 3d. 
However august be the object we 
propose to ourselves, every less worthy 



BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



path we take to insure it distorts the 

mental sight of our ambition ; and the 

means, by degrees, abase the end to 

their own standard. This is the true 

misfortune of a man nobler than his 

age — that the instruments he must 

use soil himself: half he reforms his 

times; but half, too, the times will 

corrupt the reformer. 

Bienzi. 

January J^th. 
Out, then, upon that vulgar craving 
of those who comprehend neither the 
vast truths of life, nor the grandeur of 
ideal art, and who ask from poet or 
narrator the poor and petty morality 
of " Poetical Justice " — a justice exist- 
ing not in our work -day world — a jus- 
tice existing not in the sombre page of 



FE03I BULWEB LYTTON. 



history — a justice existing not in the 
loftier conceptions of men whose genius 
has grappled with the enigmas which 
art and poetry only can foreshadow and 
divine : — unknown to us in the street 
and the market — unknown to us on 
the scaffold of the patriot, or amidst 
the flames of the martyr — unknown to 
us in the Lear and the Hamlet — in the 
Agamemnon and the Prometheus. 
Millions upon millions, ages upon ages, 
are entered but as items in the vast 
account in which the recording angel 
sums up the unerring justice of God to 
man. 

The Last of the Barons. 

Jamtary 6th. 
But the final greatness of a fortu- 
nate man is rarely made by any vio- 



BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



lent effort of his own. He has sown 

the seeds in the time foregone, and 

the ripe time brings up the harvest. 

His fate seems taken out of his own 

control; greatness seems thrust upon 

him. He has made himself, as it were, 

a ioa7it to the nation, a thing necessary 

to it ; he has identified himself with 

his age, and in the wreath or the crown 

on his brow the age itself seems to put 

forth its flower. 

Harold. 

January 6th. 
And, in truth, it is a divine pleasure 
to admire ! admiration seems in some 
measure to appropriate to ourselves 
the qualities it honors in others. "We 
wed, — we root ourselves to the na- 
tures we so love to contemplate, 



FROM BULWER LYTTON. 



and their life groAvs a part of our 

own. 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 

January 7th. 

There is not, perhaps, a stronger 

feeling in the world than pity, when 

united with admiration. 

Eugene Aram. 

Jamtary 8th. 
In every emergency, in every temp- 
tation, there rose to his eyes the fate 
of him so gifted, so noble in much, so 
formed for greatness in all things, 
blasted by one crime — self-sought, but 
self -denied; a crime, the offspring of 
bewildered reasonings — all the while 
speculating upon virtue. 

Eugene Aram, 



BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



January 9th. 
"Know thj^'self," said the old phi- 
losophy. " Improve thyself," saith the 
new. The great object of the So- 
journer in Time is not to waste all his 
passions and gifts on the things ex- 
ternal, that he must leave behind — 
that which he cultivates within is all 
that he can carry into the Eternal 

Progress. 

The Caxtons, 

January 10th. 
AYhen in his fresh youth and his 
calm lofty manhood, Harold saw ac- 
tion, how adventurous soever, limited 
to the barriers of noble duty ; when 
he lived but for his country, all spread 
clear before his vision in the sunlight 
of day ; but as the barriers receded, 



FEOM BULWEB LYTTON. 



while the horizon extended, his eye left 
the Certain to rest on the Yague. As 
self, though still half concealed from 
his conscience, gradually assumed the 
wide space love of country had filled, 
the maze of delusion commenced : he 
was to shape fate out of circumstance, 
— no longer defy fate through virtue. 

Harold. 

January 11th. 
It is an excellent thing to have an 
ear, and a voice, and a heart for music. 

Eryiest Maltravera. 

January 12th. 

"Follies seem these thoughts to 

others, and to philosophy, in truth, they 

are so," said Rienzi ; " but all my life 

long, omen and type and shadow have 



10 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

linked themselves to action and event : 
and the atmosphere of other men hath 
not been mine. Life itself a riddle, 
why should riddles amaze us ? The 
Future ! — what mystery in the very 
word ! Had we lived all through the 
Past, since Time was, our prof oundest 
experience of a thousand ages could 
not give us a guess of the events that 
wait the very moment we are about to 
enter ! Thus deserted by Keason, what 
wonder that we recur to the Imagina- 
tion, on which, by dream and symbol, 
God sometimes paints the likeness of 
things to come ? " 

Bienzi. 

January 13th. 
Who can endure to leave the Future 
all unguessed, and sit tamely down to 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON, 11 



groan under the fardel of the Present ? 

ITo, no! that which the foolish- wise 

call Fanaticism, belongs to the same 

part of us as Hope. Each but carries 

us onward— from a barren strand to a 

glorious, if unbounded sea. Each is 

the yearning for the Great Beyond, 

which attests our immortality. Each 

has its visions and chimeras— some 

false, but some true ! Yerily, a man 

who becomes great is often but made 

so by a kind of sorcery in his own soul 

— a Pythia which prophesies that he 

shall be great— and so renders the life 

one effort to fulfil the warning! Is 

this folly?— it were so, if all things 

stopped at the grave! But perhaps 

the very sharpening, and exercising, 

and elevating the faculties here— 



12 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

though but for a bootless end on earth 

— may be designed to fit the soul, thus 

quickened and ennobled, to some high 

destiny heyond the earth 1 Who can 

tell ? not I ! — Let us pray I 

Bienzi, 

January llfth. 
As Providence bestows upon fishes 
the instrument of fins, whereby they 
balance and direct their movements, 
however rapid and erratic, through 
the pathless deeps ; so to the cold- 
blooded creatures of our own species — 
that may be classed under the genus 
MONEY-MAKERS — the samc protective 
power accords the fin-like properties 
of prudence and caution, wherewith 
your true money-getter buoys and 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 13 



guides himself majestically through 
the great seas of speculation. 

The Caxtons. 

Jamiary 15th. 
Error is sometimes sweet ; but there 
is no anguish like an error of which 
we feel ashamed. I cannot submit to 
blush for myself. 

Ernest Maltravers. 

January 16 th. 
Our nature is ever grander in the 
individual than the mass. 

The Last of the Barons. 

January 17th. 
In resting so solely on man's per- 
ceptions of the right, he lost one attri- 
bute of the true hero— faith. We do 
not mean that word in the religious 
sense alone, but in the more compre- 



14 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

hensive. He did not rely on the Ce- 
lestial Something pervading all na- 
ture, never seen, only felt when duly 
courted, stronger and lovelier than 
what eye could behold and mere rea- 
son could embrace. Believing, it is 
true, in God, he lost those fine links 
that unite God to man's secret heart, 
and which are woven alike from the 
simplicity of the child and the wisdom 
of the poet. To use a modern illustra- 
tion, his large mind was a '* cupola 

lighted from below." 

Harold. 

January 18th. 

In fact, before we can dispense with 

the world, w^e must, by a long and 

severe novitiate — by the probation of 

much thought, and much sorrow — by 



FB03I BULWEB LYTTON 15 

deep and sad conviction of the vanity 
of all that the world can give us, have 
raised ourselves — not in the fervor of 
an hour, but habitually — above the 
world; an abstraction — an idealism — 
which, in our wiser age, how few even 
of the wisest can attain ! Yet, till we 
are thus fortunate, we know not the 
true divinity of contemplation, nor the 
all-sufficing mightiness of conscience : 
nor can we retreat with solemn foot- 
steps into that Holy of Holies in our 
own souls, wherein we know, and feel, 
how much our nature is capable of the 
self -existence of a God ! 

Bienzi. 

January 19th. 
I tell thee, that if all the priests in 
Christendom, and all the barons in 



16 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

France, stood between me and my 
bride, I would hew my way through 
the midst. Foes invade my realm — 
let them ; princes conspire against me 
— I smile in scorn ; subjects mutiny — 
this strong hand can punish, or this 
large heart can forgive. All these are 
the dangers which He who governs 
men should be prepared to meet ; but 
a man has a right to His love, as the 
stag to his hind. 

Harold. 

Jamiav]! Wth. 
The husbandman accuses not fate, 
when, having sown thistles, he reaps 
not corn. Thou hast sown crime, 
accuse not fate if thou reapest not the 
harvest of virtue. 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 



FBOM BULWEB LYTTON, 17 

January ^Ist. 
Virtue is my lover, my pride, my 
comfort, my life of life. 

The Caxtons. 

January ^2d. 
The objects of the great world are 
to be pursued only by the excitement 
of the passions. The passions are at 
once our masters and our deceivers ; — 
they urge us onward, yet present no 
limit to our progress. The farther we 
proceed, the more dim and shadowy 
grows the goal. It is impossible for a 
man who leads the life of the world, 
the life of the passions, ever to expe- 
rience content. For the life of the 
passions is that of a perpetual desire ; 
but a state of content is the absence of 
all desire. 

Eugene Aram. 



18 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

January ^3d. 
It is marvellous with what liberality 
Providence atones for the partial dis- 
pensations of Fortune. Independence, 
or the vigorous pursuit of it ; affection, 
with its hopes and its rewards ; a life 
, only rendered by Art more susceptible 
to Nature — in which the physical en- 
joyments are pure and healthful — in 
which the moral faculties expand har- 
moniously with the intellectual — and 
the heart is at peace with the mind ; 
is this a mean lot for ambition to de- 
sire — and is it so far out of human 
reach ? 

The Caxtons. 

January 24^th. 
To a degenerate and embruted peo- 
ple, liberty seems too plain a thing, if 



PROM BULWEB LYTTON. 19 

unadorned by the pomp of the very 
despotism they would dethrone. Ke- 
venge is their desire, rather than Ke- 
lease ; and the greater the new power 
they create, the greater seems their re- 
venge against the old. 

Bietizi. 

January '25th. 
Now my mother, true woman as 
she was, had a womanly love of show 
in her own quiet way — of making '' a 
genteel figure" in the eyes of the 
neighborhood — of seeing that sixpence 
not only went as far as sixpence ought 
to go, but that, in the going, it should 
emit a mild but imposing splendor, — 
not, indeed, a gaudy flash — a startling 
Borealian coruscation, which is scarcely 
within the modest and placid idiosyn- 



20 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

crasies of sixpence — but a gleam of 
gentle and benign light, just to show 
where a sixpence had been, and allow 
you time to say " Behold ! " before 

"The jaws of darkness did devour it up." 

The Caxtons. 

January 26th, 
And when you look not on the 
heaven alone but in all space — on all 
the illimitable creation, you will 
know that I am there ! For the home 
of a spirit is wherever spreads the 
IJniversal Presence of God. And to 
what numerous stages of beings, what 
paths, what duties, what active and 
glorious tasks in other worlds may we 
not be reserved — perhaps to know and 
share them together, and mount age 



FI103I BULWEB LYTTON. 21 

after age higher in the scale of being. 
For surely in heaven there is no pause 
or torpor — we do not lie down in 
calm and unimprovable repose. Move- 
ment and progress will remain the law 
and condition of existence. And there 
will be efforts and duties for us above 
as there have been below. 

Ernest ^laltravers. 



January ^7th. 
Like most other friends, the Imagi- 
nation is capricious, and forsakes us 
often at the moment in which we 
most need its aid. As we grow older, 
we begin to learn that, of the two, 
our more faithful and steadfast com- 
forter is — Custom. 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 



22 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

January ^8th. 
As you see the wind only agitate 
the green leaf upon the bough, while 
the leaf which has lain withered and 
seared on the ground, bruised and 
trampled upon till the sap and life are 
gone, is suddenly whirled aloft — now 
here — now there — without stay and 
without rest ; so the love which visits 
the happy and the hopeful hath but 
freshness on its wings ! its violence is 
but sportive. But the heart that hath 
fallen from the green things of life, 
that is without hope, that hath no 
summer in its fibres, is torn and 
whirled by the same wind that but 
caresses its brethren ; — it hath no 
bough to cling to — it is dashed from 
path to path — till the winds fall, 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 23 

and it is crushed into the mire for- 
ever. 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 

January '29th. 
Is there no nobler ambition than 
that of the vanity ? Is there no am- 
bition of the heart? — an ambition to 
console, to cheer the griefs of those 
who love and trust us ? — an ambition 
to build a happiness out of the reach 
of fate ? — an ambition to soothe some 
high soul, in its strife with a mean 
world — to lull to sleep its pain, to 
smile to serenity its cares? Oh, me- 
thinks a woman's true ambition would 
rise the bravest when, in the very 
sight of death itself, the voice of him 
in whom her glory had dwelt through 
life should say, " Thou fearest not to 



24 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

walk to the grave and to heaven by 
my side ! " 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 

tlanuary 30th. 
Love, what earthly love should be, 
— a thing pure as light, and peaceful 
as immortality, watching over the 
stormy world, that it shall survive, 
and high above the clouds and vapors 
that roll below. Let little minds in- 
troduce into the holiest of affections 
all the bitterness and tumult of com- 
mon life ! Let us love as beings who 
will one day be inhabitants of the 
stars ! 

Ernest Maltravers, 

January 31st. 
In politics, and in a highly artifi- 
cial state, what doubts beset us ! what 



FEOM BULWEE LYTTON. 25 



darkness surrounds 1 If we connive at 
abuses, we juggle with our own reason 
and integrity— if we attack them, how 
much, how fatally we may derange 
that solemn and conventional order 
which is the mainspring of the vast 
machine! How little, too, can one 
man, whose talents may not be in 
that coarse road— in that mephitic at- 
mosphere, be enabled to effect ! 

Ernest Maltravers. 



FEBRUARY. 



February 1st. 
Peide had served to console him in 
sorrow, and, therefore, it was a friend 
— it had supported him when disgusted 
with fraud, or in resistance to vio- 
lence ; and, therefore, it was a cham- 
pion and a fortress. It was a pride of 
a peculiar sort — it attached itself to no 
one point in especial — not to talent, 
knowledge, mental gifts — still less to 
the vulgar commonplaces of birth and 
fortune; — it rather resulted from a 
supreme and wholesale contempt of 
all other men, and all their objects 
— of ambition — of glory — of the hard 
business of life. His favorite virtue 
was fortitude — it was on this that he 



30 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

now mainly valued himself. He was 

proud of his struggles against others — 

prouder still of conquests over his own 

passions. He looked upon fate as the 

arch-enemy against whose attacks we 

should ever prepare. He fancied that 

against fate he had thoroughly schooled 

himself. In the arrogance of his heart, 

he said, " I can defy the future." He 

believed in the boast of the vain old 

sage — " I am a world to myself ! " 

Alice, 

February ^d. 
We all form to ourselves some heau 
ideal of the " fair spirit " we desire as 
our earthly " minister," and somewhat 
capriciously gauge and proportion our 
admiration of living shapes according 
as the lean ideal is more or less em- 



FROM BULWER LYTTON. 31 



bodied or approached. Beauty, of a 
stamp that is not familiar to the 
dreams of our fancy, may win the 
cold homage of our judgment, while a 
look, a feature, a something that real- 
izes and calls up a boyish vision, and 
assimilates even distinctly to the pic- 
ture we wear within us, has a loveli- 
ness peculiar to our eyes, and kindles 
an emotion that almost seems to be- 
long to memory. 

Ernest Maltravers. 

February 3d. 
She endured the bitterest curse of 
noble natures — hiimiliation ! 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 

February J^th. 
What a noble heart dares least is to 
belie the plighted word, and what the 



32 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

kind heart shuns most is to wrong the 
confiding friend. 

The Last of the Barons. 

FebruaTy 5th. 
"Wise men may always make their 
own future, and seize their own fates. 
Prudence, patience, labor, valor ; these 
are the stars that rule the career of 
mortals. 

Harold. 

February 6th. 
" Fate ! " cried Eienzi ; " there is no 
fate ! Between the thought and the 
success, God is the only agent; and 
(he added with a voice of deep solem- 
nity) I shall not be deserted. Yisions 
by night, even while thine arms are 
around me : omens and impulses, stir- 
ring and divine, by day, even in the 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 33 

midst of the living crowd — encourage 
my path, and point my goal. Now, 
even now, a voice seems to whisper 
in my ear — * Pause not : tremble not ; 
waver not : — for the eye of the All-See- 
ing is upon thee, and the hand of the 

All-Powerful shall protect ! ' " 

Bienzi. 

February 7th. 
Neither is it just to man, nor wisely 
submissive to the Disposer of all events, 
to suppose that war is wholly and wan- 
tonly produced by human crimes and 
follies — that it conduces only to ill, 
and does not as often arise from the 
necessities interwoven in the frame- 
work of society, and speed the great 
ends of the human race, conformably 
with the designs of the Omniscient. 



34 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

JSTot one great war has ever desolated 
the earth, but has left behind it seeds 
that have ripened into blessings in- 
calculable ! 

The Caxtons. 

February 8th. 
If later wars yet perplex us as to 
the good that the All-wise One draws 
from their evils, our posterity may 
read their uses as clearly as we now 
read the finger of Providence resting 
on the barrows of Marathon, or guid- 
ing Peter the Hermit to the battle- 
fields of Palestine. JSTor, while we 
admit the evil to the passing genera- 
tion, can we deny that many of the 
virtues that make the ornament and 
vitality of peace sprung up first in the 
convulsion of war ! 

The Caxtons. 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 35 



February 9th. 
"Pauperism, in contradistinction to 
poverty," he was wont to say, " is the 
dependence upon other people for ex- 
istence, not on our own exertions; 
there is a moral pauperism in the man 
who is dependent on others for that 
support of moral life— self-respect." 

Ernest Maltravers. 

February 10th. 

Belief cometh as the wind. Can 

the tree say to the wind, "Kest thou 

on my boughs"? or Man to Belief, 

" Fold thy wings on my heart ! " 

Harold. 

Fehruo/ry 11th. 
Isis is a fable— start not !— that for 
which Isis is a type is a reality, an im- 
mortal being; Isis is nothing. Nature, 



36 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

which she represents, is the mother of 
all things — dark, ancient, inscrutable, 
save to the gifted few. " None among 
mortals hath ever lifted up my veil," 
so saith the Isis that you adore; but 
to the wise that veil hath been re- 
moved, and we have stood face to 
face with the solemn loveliness of 
Nature. 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 

February 12th. 
Few men throughout life are the 
servants to one desire. When we 
gain the middle of the bridge of our 
mortality, different objects from those 
which attracted us upward almost 
invariably lure us to the descent. 
Happy they who exhaust in the for- 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 37 

mer part of the journey all the foibles 
of existence ! 

Eugene Aram. 

February 13th. 
"That serene heaven, those lovely 
stars," said Maltravers at last, "do 
they not preach to us the Philosophy 
of Peace? Do they not tell us how 
much calm belongs to the dignity of 
man, and the sublime essence of the 
soul? Petty distractions and self- 
wrought cares are not congenial to 
our real nature ; their very disturb- 
ance is a proof that they are at war 
with our natures." 

Ernest Maltravers. 

February Hth. — St. Valentine's Day. 

Miserable animals are bachelors in 

all countries ; but most miserable in 



38 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Bushland. A man does not know 
what a helpmate of the soft sex is 
in the Old World, where women seem 
a matter of course. But in the Bush 
a wife is literally bone of your bone, 
flesh of your flesh — your better half, 
your ministering angel, your Eve of 
the Eden — in short, all that poets 
have sung, or young orators say at 
public dinners, when called upon to 
give the toast of " The Ladies." 

The Caxtons. 

February 15th. 
There is an eloquence in Memory, 
because it is the nurse of Hope. There 
is a sanctity in the Past, but only be- 
cause of the chronicles it retains, — 
chronicles of the progress of mankind, 
— stepping-stones in civilization, in lib- 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 39 

erty, and in knowledge. Our fathers 
forbid us to recede, — they teach us 
what is our rightful heritage, they bid 
us reclaim, they bid us augment that 
heritage, — preserve their virtues, and 
avoid their errors. These are the true 
uses of the Past. Like the sacred edi- 
fice in which we are, — it is a tomb 

upon which to rear a temple. 

Eienzi. 

February 16th. 
It is a deadening thought to mental 
ambition, that the circle of happiness 
we can create is formed more by our 
moral than our mental qualities. A 
warm heart, though accompanied but 
by a mediocre understanding, is even 
more likely to promote the happiness 
of those around, than are the absorbed 



40 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

and abstract, though kindly, powers of 
a more elevated genius. 

Eugene Aram, 

February 17th. 
"There," said Adam, quietly, and 
pointing to the feudal roofs, "there 
seems to rise power — and yonder 
(glancing to the river), yonder seems 
to flow Genius ! A century or so 
hence, the walls shall vanish, but the 
river shall roll on. Man makes the 
castle, and founds the power — God 
forms the river and creates the Genius." 

The Last of the Barons. 

February 18th. 
There is a beautiful and singular pas- 
sage in Dante (which has not perhaps 
attracted the attention it deserves), 
wherein the stern Florentine defends 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 41 

Fortune from the popular accusations 
against her. According to him, she is 
an angelic power appointed by the 
Supreme Being to direct and order the 
course of human splendors ; she obeys 
the will of God; she is blessed, and, 
hearing not those who blaspheme her, 
calm and aloft amongst the other an- 
gelic powers, revolves her spheral 
course, and rejoices in her beatitude. 

The Caxtons. 

FebTuary 19th. 
"Christian, believest thou, among 
the doctrines of thy creed, that the 
dead live again — that they who have 
loved here are united hereafter — that 
beyond the grave our good name shines 
pure from the mortal mists that un- 
justly dim it in the gross-eyed world — 



42 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

and that the streams which are divided 
by the desert and the rock meet in the 
solemn Hades, and flow once more into 
one ? " 

" Believe I that, O Athenian ? No, 
I do not believe — I hiow ! " 

The Last Days of Pompeiu 

February Wth. 
Up, Truth, whose strength is in 
purity, whose image is woman, and aid 
the soul of the brave ! 

Harold. 

February ^Ist 
I think we have tampered Love to 
too great a preponderance over the 
other excitements of life. As children, 
we are taught to dream of it ; in youth, 
our books, our conversation, our plays, 
are filled with it. We are trained to 



FROM BULWER LYTTON, 43 

consider it the essential of life; and 
yet, the moment we come to actual 
experience, the moment we indulge 
this inculcated and stimulated craving, 
nine times out of ten we find ourselves 
wretched and undone. Ah, believe 
me, Mr. Maltravers, this is not a world 
in which we should preach up, too far, 
the philosophy of Love ! 

Ernest Maltravers, 



February '22 d. — Washington'' s Birth- 
day. 
Pluck the scales from the hand of 
Fraud ! — the sword from the hand of 
Violence ! — the balance and the sword 
are the ancient attributes of Justice ! — 
restore them to her again ! This be 
your high task, — these be your great 



44 BEAUTIFUL TITOUOnTS 



ends! Doom any man who opposes 
thorn 11 traitor to his country. Gain a 
victory greater than those of the Ciosars 
— a victory over yourselves I 

Kicnzi. 

Oh, mother niinol that the boy had 
stood by thy Unoo, and heard from thy 
li[)s why lii'e was ^iven us, in what life 
shall end, and how heaven stands o})on 
to us night and day ! Oh, falhor mine ; 
that thou luidst been his preceptor, not 
in book learning, but the heart's sim])lo 
wisdom ! ()h, tiiat ho had learned from 
thee, in parables closed with practice, 
the ha[>pinoss of self-sacrifice, and 
how "good deeds sliould repair the 
bad!" 

The Caxtom. 



FRODI lillLUim LYTTON. 



February 'JJ,th. 
Awful is lJi(i (liK^I botwoon man and 
TiiK A(iK in wliich Im livosl 

The Lant of the Jiarotm. 

February 'J.^/jtL 
TIio l(3SSons of julvorsity aro not al- 
ways salutary soniotiuios tlicy soltou 
and amend, but as often they indur-ate 
and pervert. 11" vv(^ (M)!isi(l(ir oursiilviis 
more liarshly trciJitiHl by I'ate tluui 
those around us, and do not acknowl- 
edge in our own deeds the justice oT 
the severity, we become too a])t to 
(hnim 1\h) world our (^ruMny to (5a,se 
ourselves in (U^lia.nco, to wrestle against 
our softer t<elf, and to indiij^ci tlie 
darker passions which a,i'e so (easily fer- 
mented by the sense of injustice. 

The IaihI Ddi/H of rompeii. 



46 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

February 26th. 
As Napoleon wept over one wounded 
soldier in the field of battle, yet or- 
dered without emotion thousands to a 
certain death; so Aram would have 
sacrificed himself for an individual, but 
would not have sacrificed a momentary 
gratification for his race. 

Eugenie Aram. 

February 27th. 
" Man renews the fibre and material 
of his body every seven years," said 
my father ; " in three times seven years 
he has time to renew the inner man. 
Can two passengers in yonder street 
be more unlike each other than the soul 
is to the soul after an interval of twenty 
years ? Brother, the plough does not 



FEOM BULWEB LYTTON. 47 

pass over the soul in vain, nor care 

over the human heart. ISTew crops 

change the character of the land ; and 

the plough must go deep indeed before 

it stirs up the mother stone." 

The Caxtom, 

February ^8th. 
You may think it strange that I — a 
plain, steadfast, trading, working, care- 
ful ,man — should have all these feel- 
ings; but I will tell you wherefore 
such as I sometimes have them, nurse 
them, brood on them, more than you 
lords and gentlemen, with all your 
graceful arts in pleasing. We know no 
light loves ! no brief distractions to the 
one arch passion ! "We sober sons of 
the stall and the ware are no general 



48 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

gallants — we love plainly, we love but 

once, and we love heartily. 

The Last of the Barons. 

February 29th, 
There are sometimes event and sea- 
son in the life of man the hardest and 
most rational, when he is driven per- 
force to faith the most implicit and 
submissive; as the storm drives the 
wings of the petrel over a measureless 
sea, till it falls tame, and rejoicing at 
refuge, on the sails of some lonely ship. 
Seasons when difficulties, against which 
reason seems stricken into palsy, leave 
him bewildered in dismay — when dark- 
ness, which experience cannot pierce, 
wraps the conscience, as sudden night 
wraps the traveller in the desert — 
when error entangles his feet in its in- 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 



extricable web — when, still desirous of 
the right, he sees before him but a 
choice of evil ; and the Angel of the 
Past, with a flaming sword, closes on 
him the gates of the Future. Then, 
Faith flashes on him, with a light from 
the cloud. Then, he clings to Prayer 
as a drowning wretch to the plank. 
Then, that solemn authority which 
clothes the Priest, as the interpreter 
between the soul and the Divinity, 
seizes on the heart that trembles with 
terror and joy ; then, that mysterious 
recognition of Atonement, of sacrifice 
of purifying lustration (mystery which 
lies hid in the core of all religions), 
smooths the frown on the Past, removes 
the flaming sword from the Future. 

Harold. 



MARCH. 



March 1st. 
And, if the beauty of that face were 
not of the loftiest or the most dazzling 
order, if its soft and quiet character 
might be outshone by many, of loveli- 
ness less really perfect, yet never was 
there a countenance that, to some 
eyes, would have seemed more charm- 
ing, and never one in which more elo- 
quently was wrought that ineffable 
and virgin expression which Italian 
art seeks for in its models — in which 
modesty is the outward, and tenderness 
the latent, expression; the bloom of 
youth, both of form and heart, ere the 
first frail and delicate freshness of 



54 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

either is brushed away : and when 
even love itself, the only unquiet vis- 
itant that should be known at such an 
age, is but a sentiment, and not a 
passion ! 

Bienzi, 

March '2d. 
I agree with Helvetius, the child 
should be educated from its birth ; but 
how ? — there is the rub : send him to 
school forthwith ! Certainly, he is at 
school already with the two great 
teachers, IN'ature and Love. Observe, 
that childhood and genius have the 
same master-organ in common — in- 
quisitiveness. Let childhood have its 
way, and as it began where genius be- 
gins, it may find what genius finds. 

The Caxtona. 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 55 

March 3d. 
Charity and compassion are virtues 
taught with difficulty to ordinary 
men ; to true Genius they are but the 
instincts which direct it to the Destiny 
it is born to fulfil — viz, the discovery 
and redemption of new tracts in our 
common nature. Genius — the Sublime 
Missionary — goes forth from the serene 
Intellect of the Author to live in the 
wants, the griefs, the infirmities of 
others, in order that it may learn their 
language; and as its highest achieve- 
ment is Pathos, so its most absolute 
requisite is Pity ! 

Ernest Maltravers. 

March lith. — Inauguration Day. 
There is more glory in laying these 
rough foundations of a mighty state, 



56 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



though no trumpets resound with 
your victory — though no laurels shall 
shadow your tomb — than in forcing 
the onward progress of your race over 
burning cities and hecatombs of men ! 

The Caxtons, 

March 5tli. 
So wonderful in equalizing all states 
and all times in the varying tide of 
life are these two rulers yet levellers 
of mankind, Hope and Custom, that 
the very idea of an eternal punishment 
includes that of an utter alteration of 
the whole mechanism of the soul in its 
human state, and no effort of an im- 
agination, assisted by past experience, 
can conceive a state of torture which 
Custom can never blunt, and from 
which the chainless and immaterial 



FE03I BULWEB LYTTON. 57 

spirit can never be beguiled into even 
a momentary escape. 

Eugene Aram. 

March 6th. 
IN"©, whatever the sin of my oath, 
never will I believe that heaven can 
punish millions for the error of one 
man. Let the bones of the dead war 
against us ; in life, they were men like 
ourselves, and no saints in the calendar 
so holy as the freemen who fight for 
their hearths and their altars. 

Harold. 

March 7th. 
That trust in an all-directing Provi- 
dence, to which he had schooled him- 
self, had (if we may so say with rever- 
ence) driven his beautiful soul into the 
opposite error, so fatal to the affairs of 



58 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

life ; the error that deadens and be- 
numbs the energy of free will and the 
noble alertness of active duty. Why 
strain and strive for the things of this 
world ? God would order all for the 
best. Alas ! God hath placed us in 
this world, each, from king to peasant, 
with nerves, and hearts, and blood, 
and passions, to struggle with our 
kind ; and, no matter how heavenly 
the goal, to labor with the million in 
the race ! 

Tlie Last of the Barons. 

March 8th. 
There are times when the arrow 
quivers within us — in which all space 
seems too confined. Like the wounded 
hart, we could fly on forever; there 
is a vague desire of escape — a yearn- 



FROM BULWER LYTTON. 59 

ing, almost insane, to get out from our 
own selves ; the soul struggles to flee 
away, and take the wings of the morn- 
ing. 

Ernest Maltravers. 

March 9th. 
One last, last glance from the soft 
eyes of Fanny, and then Solitude 
rushed upon me — rushed, as something 
visible, palpable, overpowering. I felt 
it in the glare of the sunbeam — I 
heard it in the breath of the air ! like 
a ghost it rose there — where she had 
filled the space with her presence but a 
moment before. A something seemed 
gone from the universe forever; a 
change like that of death passed 
through my being ; and when I woke 
to feel that my being lived again, I 



60 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

knew that it was my youth and its 
poet-land that were no more, and that 
I had passed, with an unconscious step, 
which never could retrace its way, into 
the hard world of laborious man ! 

The Caxtons. 

March 10th. 
I am hard-hearted enough to believe 
that work never fails to those who 
seek it in good earnest. It was said of 
some man, famous for keeping his 
word, that, "if he had promised you 
an acorn, and all the oaks in England 
failed to produce one, he would have 
sent to Norway for an acorn." If I 
wanted work, and there was none to 
be had in the Old World, I would find 
my way to the New. 

The Caxtons. 



FBOM BULWEB LYTTON. 61 

March 11th. 
Though a scholar is often a fool, he 
is never a fool so supreme, so superla- 
tive, as when he is defacing the first 
unsullied page of the human history, by 
entering into it the commonplaces of 
his own pedantry. A scholar, sir — at 
least one like me — is of all persons the 
most unfit to teach young children. A 
mother, sir — a simple, natural, loving 
mother — is the infant's true guide to 
knowledge. 

The Caxtons, 

March IMh. 
Men dupe, deceive our sex — and 
for selfish purposes ; they are pardoned 
— even by their victims. Did I de- 
ceive you with a false hope ? Well — 
what my object ? — what my excuse ? — 



62 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

my husband's liberty — my land's sal- 
vation I Woman, — my Lord, alas, your 
SOX too rarely understand her weak- 
ness or her greatness I Erring — all 
human as she is to others — God gifts 
her with a thousand virtues to the one 
she loves ! It is from that love that 
she alone drinks her nobler nature. 
For the hero of her worship she has 
the meekness of the dove — the devo- 
tion of the saint ; for his safety in 
peril, for his rescue in misfortune, her 
vain sense imbibes the sagacity of the 
serpent — her weak heart, the courage 
of the lioness ! 

Eienzi. 

March 13th, 
Think you it is the man, the emperor, 
that thus sways ? — no, it is the pomp, 



FROM BVLWEB LYTTON. 63 

the awe, the majesty that surround 
him — these are his impostures, his de- 
lusions ; our oracles and our divinations, 
our rites and our ceremonies, are the 
means of our sovereignty and the 
engines of our power. They are the 
same means to the same end, the wel- 
fare and harmony of mankind. 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 

March nth. 
Life is so uncertain and so short, 
that we cannot too soon bring the lit- 
tle it can yield into the great common- 
wealth of the Beautiful or the Honest ; 
and both belong to and make up the 
Useftd. 

Ernest Maltravers. 

March 15th. 
" But," answered the Nazarene, " ask 



64 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

thy reason, can that religion be sound 
which outrages all morality ? You are 
told to worship your gods. What are 
those gods, even according to your- 
selves ? What their actions, what their 
attributes? Are they not all repre- 
sented to you as the blackest of crimi- 
nals ? yet you are asked to serve them 
as the holiest of divinities. Jupiter 
himself is a parricide and an adulterer. 
What are the meaner deities but imi- 
tators of his vices ? You are told not 
to murder, but you worship murderers ; 
you are told not to commit adultery, 
and you make your prayers to an 
adulterer. Oh ! what is this but a 
mockery of the holiest part of man's 
nature, which is faith ? " 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 



FROM BULWER LYTTON. 66 

March 16th. 
Genius, in an age where it is not ap- 
preciated, is the greatest curse the iron 

Fates can inflict on man. 

The Last of the Barona. 

March 17th. 

The philosophy limited to the reason 

puts into motion the automata of the 

closet— but to those who have the 

world for a stage, and who find their 

hearts are the great actors, experience 

and wisdom must be wrought from the 

Philosophy of the Passion. 

Ernest Maltra/vera. 

March 18th. 
Ought we not to make something 
great out of a youth under twenty, 
who has, in the highest degree, quick- 



BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



ness to conceive and courage to exe- 
cute ? On the other hand, all faculties 
that can make greatness, contain those 
that can attain goodness. In the 
savage Scandinavian, or the ruthless 
Frank, lay the germs of a Sydney or a 
Bayard. What would the best of us 
be, if he were suddenly placed at war 
with the whole world ! 

The Caxtons, 

March 19th. 
My Lord I my Lord ! there is but 
one way to restore the greatness of a 
people — it is an appeal to the people 
themselves. It is not in the power of 
princes and barons to make a state 
permanently glorious ; they raise them- 
selves, but they raise not the people 
with them. All great regenerations 



FEOM BULWEB LYTTON. 67 

are the universal movement of the 
mass. 

Bienzi. 

March Wth. 
Yet, on the outskirt of the forest, 
dusk and shapeless, that witch without 
a name stood in the shadow, pointing 
toward them, with outstretched arm, 
in vague and denouncing menace; — 
as if, come what may, all change of 
creed, — be the faith ever so simple, the 
truth ever so bright and clear, — there 
is a SUPERSTITION native to that 
Border-land between the Visible and 
the Unseen, which will find its priest 
and its votaries, till the full and crown- 
ing splendor of Heaven shall melt 
every shadow from the world ! 

Harold. 



68 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

March '21st. 
Happy the man who hath never 
known what it is to taste of Fame — 
to have it is a purgatory, to want it is 
a hell! 

The Last of the Barons. 

March 22d. 
Great was the folly and great the 
error of indulging imagination that 
had no basis — of linking the whole use- 
fulness of my life to the will of a 
human creature like myself. Heaven 
did not design the passion of love to 
be this tyrant, nor is it so with the 
mass and multitude of human life. 
We dreamers, solitary students like 
me, or half poets like poor Koland, 

make our own disease. 

The Caxtwiis, 



FBOM BULWEB LYTTON. 69 

March 23d. 
A man ought not to attempt any of 
the highest walks of Mind and Art, as 
the mere provision of daily bread ; not 
literature alone, but everything else of 
the same degree. He ought not to be 
a statesman, or an orator, or a philos- 
opher, as a thing of pence and shill- 
ings : and usually all men, save the 
poor poet, feel this truth insensibly. 

Ernest Maltravers. 

March 2Ji.th. 
The hero weeps less at the reverses 
of his enemy than at the fortitude 

with which he bears them. 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 

March 25th. 
And he, indeed, who first arouses in 
the bondsman the sense and soul of 



70 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

freedom, comes as near as is permitted 
to man, nearer than the philosopher, 
nearer even than the poet, to the great 
creative attribute of God ! — But, if the 
breast be uneducated, the gift may 
curse the giver ; and he who passes at 
once from the slave to the freeman 
nuiy pass as rapidly from the freeman 
to the rullian. 

Rienzi. 

Mivrh ^26th. 
But capital, where was that to come 
from ? Nature gives us all except the 
means to turn her into marketable ac- 
count. As old Plautus saith so wittily, 
" l^ay, night, water, sun and moon are 
to be had gratis ; for everything else 
— down with your dust I " 

The Caxtons. 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 71 

March ^7th. 
There is one very peculiar pleasure 
that we feel as we grow older, — it is 
to see embodied in another and a more 
lovely shape the thoughts and senti- 
ments we once nursed ourselves ; it is 
as if we viewed before us the incarna- 
tion of our own youth; and it is no 
wonder that we are warmed toward 
the object that thus seems the living 
apparition of all that was brightest in 
ourselves ! 

Eugene Aram. 

March ^8th. 
It is in our power to make the life 
within us all soul ; so that the heart is 
not, or is felt not; so that grief and 
joy have no power over us ; so that we 
look tranquil on the stormy earth. 

Harold, 



72 BEAUTIFUL THOUQHTS 

March ^9th. 

Tell mo if there over, even in the 

ages most favorable to glory, could be 

a triumph more exalted and elating 

than the conquest of one noble heai-t ? 

The Last Days of rom^ycii, 

March oOth. 
Strange that people should weary 
so much of themselves that the}^ can- 
not brave the prospect of a few min- 
utes passed in reflection — that a shower 
and the resources of their own thoughts 
are evils so galling — very strange in- 
deed. 

Ernest Malt ravers. 

March SJst. 
Mind, understanding, genius — fine 
things ! But, to educate the whole 
man, you must educate something 



FliOnr BULWKR LYTTON. 73 

luoro llia-M tlio,S(i. Not for want of 

mind, understanding, gonius, liavo 

Borgias and Ncros loft Uioir ii;un(\s 

as nionunients of horror to mankind. 

Whoro, in all this toaching, was ono 

iosson to warm the heart, and guide 

the soul ? 

The (hxtona. 



APRIL. 



April 1st. — " April FooVs Day.''^ 
One does not have gumption till 
one has been properly cheated — one 
must be made a fool very often in 
order not to be fooled at last ! 

Eugene Aram. 

April 2d. 
All the kings since Saul, it may be, 
are not worth one scholar's life ! 

The Last of the Barons. 

April 3d. 
In the battle of life the arrows we 
neglect to pick up, Fate, our foe, will 
store in her quiver. 

Harold. 

April Jfth. 
If there be a vile thing in the world. 



78 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

it is a plebeian, advanced by patricians, 
not for the purpose of righting his own 
order, but for pkiying the pander to 
the worst interests of theirs. He who 
is of the people but makes himself a 
traitor to his birth, if he furnishes the 
excuse for these tyrant hypocrites to 
lift up their hands and cry : " See 
what liberty exists in Eome, when we, 
the patricians, thus elevate a ple- 
beian ! " Did they ever elevate a 
plebeian if he sympathized with ple- 
beians? No, brother; should I be 
lifted above our condition, I will be 
raised by the arms of my countrymen, 
and not upon their necks." 

Rienzi. 

April 5th. 
" The desire of distinction," said he, 



FR03I lilJLWKR LYTTON. 79 



after a pause, " grows upon us till 
excitement becomes disease. The 
child who is born with tlie mariner's 
instinct laughs with glee when his 
paper bark skims the wave of a pool. 
By and by, nothing will content him 
but the ship and the ocean. Like the 
child is the author." 

ErnvM MaltravcvH. 

April Gill. 
Wonder not that I, a bookman's son, 
and, at certain ])eriods of my life, a 
bookman myself, though of k)vvly 
grade in that venerable class — wonder 
not that 1 shouhl thus, in that tran- 
sition stage between youtii and man- 
hood, have turned impatiently from 
books. — Most students, at one time or 
other in their existence, have felt the 



80 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

imperious demand of that restless 

principle) in man's nature, which calls 

upon each son of Adam to contribute 

his share to the vast treasury of human 

deeds. 

jfTie Caxtons, 

April 7th. 
Gold is the great magician of earth 
— it realizes our dreams — it gives them 
the power of a god — there is a grand- 
eur, a sublimity, in its possession ; it is 
the mightiest, yet the most obedient of 
our slaves. 

'Tlie Last Days of Fompeii. 

April Sth. 

We do indeed cleave the vast heaven 

of Truth with a weak and crippled 

wing: and often we are appalled in 

our Avay by a dread sense of the im- 



Fli03I BULWEB LYTTON. 81 



mensity around us, and of the in- 
adequacy of our own strength. But 
there is a rapture in the breath of the 
pure and difficult air, and in the prog- 
ress by which we compass earth, the 
while we draw nearer to the stars, — 
that again exalts us beyond ourselves, 
and reconciles the true student unto 
all things, — even to the hardest of 
them all, — the conviction how feebly 
our performance can ever imitate the 

grandeur of our ambition ! 

Eugene Aram. 

April 9th. 
If it be a sin, as the priests say, to 
pierce the dark walls which surround 
us here, and read the future in the dim 
world beyond, why gavest thou, O 
Heaven, the reason, never resting. 



82 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



save when it explores? Why hast 
thou set in the heart the mystic Law 
of Desire, ever toiling to the High, 
ever grasping at the L\ir ? 

Harold. 

April 10th. 
Nothing kindles the fire of love like 
a sprinkling of the anxieties of jeal- 
ousy ; it takes then a wilder, a more 
resistless liame ; it forgets its softness ; 
it ceases to be tender : it assumes some- 
thing of the intensity — of the ferocity 
— of hate. 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 

April nth. 
It is not vanity alone that makes a 
man of the Tnode invent a new bit, or 
give his name to a new kind of car- 
riage ; it is the influence of that mystic 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON, 83 

yearning after utility, which is one of 
the master-ties between the individual 
and the species. 

Ernest Maltravers. 

April mh. 
God is kinder to us all than man can 
know; for man looks only to the 
sorrow on the surface, and sees not the 
consolation in the deeps of the unwit- 
nessed soul. 

The Last of the Barons. 

April 13th. 
"So say all tyrants," rejoined the 
smith hardily, as he leaned his hammer 
against a fragment of stone — some rem- 
nant of ancient Eome — " they never 
fight against each other but it is for 
our good. One Colonna cuts me the 
throat of Orsini's baker — it is for our 



84 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

good ! another Colonna seizes on the 
daughter of Orsini's tailor — it is for 
our good ! our good — yes, for the good 
of the people ! the good of the bakers 
and tailors, eh ? " 

Bienzi. 

Ajpril IJfth. 
When I compare the Saxon of our 
land and day, all enervated and de- 
crepit by priestly superstition, with his 
forefathers in the first Christian era, 
yielding to the religion they adopted 
in its simple truths, but not to that rot 
of social happiness and free manhood 
which this cold and lifeless monachism 
— making virtue the absence of human 
ties — spreads around — which the great 
Bede, though himself a monk, vainly 
but bitterly denounced; yea, verily, 



FE03I BULWEB LYTTON. 85 



when I see the Saxon already the the- 
owe of the priest, I shudder to ask 
how long he will be folk-free of the 
tyrant. 

Harold. 

April 15th. 
Like the rainbow, Peace rests upon 
the earth, but its arch is lost in 
heaven. Heaven bathes it in hues of 
light — it springs up amidst tears and 
clouds,— it is a reflection of the Eternal 
Sun, — it is an assurance of calm — it is 
the sign of a great covenant between 
Man and God. Such peace, O young 
man! is the smile of the soul; it is 
an emanation from the distant orb 
of immortal light. Peace be with 
you! 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 



86 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Ajyril 16th. 
Long is tlio vvjiy that leads tlio vo- 
luptuary to the severities of life ; but 
it is only one step from pleasant sin to 

sheltering liypocrisy. 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 

April 17th. 
As we grow older, and sometimes a 
hope, sometimes a friend, is shivered 
from our path, the thought of an im- 
mortality loill press itself foi'cibly 
upon us ! and there, by little and 
little, as the ant piles grain after 
grain, the garners of a future suste- 
nance, we learn to carry our hopes, 
and harvest, as it were, our wishes. 

Eugene Aram. 
April 18th. 

Tt is sti'ango to imagine that war, 



FBOM BULWEB LYTTON. 87 

which of all things appears the most 
savage, should be the passion of the 
most heroic spirits. But 'tis in war 
that the knot of fellowship is closest 
drawn ; 'tis in war that mutual succor 
is most given — mutual danger run, 
and common affection most exerted 
and employed ; for heroism and philan- 
thropy are almost one and the same ! 

The Caxtons. 

April 19th. 
What a new step in the philosophy 
of life does a young man of genius 
make, when he first compares his 
theories and experience with the intel- 
lect of a clever woman of the world ! 
Perhaps it does not elevate him, but 
how it enlightens and refines ! — what 
numberless minute yet important mys- 



88 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

teries in human character and prac- 
tical wisdom does he drink uncon- 
sciously from the sparkling pe/s/Jlage 
of such a companion ! 

Ernest Maltravet-a. 

April 20th. 
He knew henceforth that even the 
criminal is not all evil; the angel 
within us is not easily expelled ; it 
survives sin, ay, and many sins, and 
leaves us sometimes in amaze and 
marvel at the good that lingers I'ound 
the heart even of the hardiest of- 
fender. 

Eugene Aram. 

April 21st. 
The evil was simply this : here was 
the intelligence of a man in all that is 
evil — and the ignorance of an infant 



FEOM BULWER LYTTON. 



in all that is good. In matters merely 
worldly, what wonderful acumen! in 
the plain principles of right and 
wrong, what gross and stolid obtuse- 
ness ! At one time, I am straining all 
my poor wit to grapple in an encoun- 
ter on the knottiest mysteries of social 
life; at another, I am guiding re- 
luctant fingers over the horn-book of 
the most obvious morals. 

The Caxtons. 

April S^d, — A French Novel. 
The true artist, whether in Eomance 
or the Drama, will often necessarily 
interest us in a vicious or criminal 
character — but he does not the less 
leave clear to our reprobation the vice 
or the crime. But here I found my- 
self called upon not only to feel inter- 



90 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

est in the villain (which would be per- 
fectly allowable — I am very much 
interested .in Macbeth and Lovelace) — 
but to admire and sympathize with 
the villainy itself. Nor was it the 
confusion of all wrong and right in 
individual character that shocked me 
the most — but rather the view of so- 
ciety altogether, painted in colors so 
hideous that, if true, instead of a revo- 
lution, it would draw down a deluge. 

The Caxtons. 

April 3Sd. 

It was thus that the same fervor 

which made the Churchman of the 

middle age a bigot without mercy, 

made the Christian of the early days a 

hero without fear. 

T/ie Last Days of Pompeii, 



FR03I BULWER LYTTON. 91 

April ^4,th. 

Fly from a load upon the heart, on 
the genius, the energy, the pride, and 
the spirit, which not one man in ten 
thousand can bear ; ily from the curse 
of owing everything to a wife ! — it is 
a reversal of all natural position, it is 
a blow to all the manhood within us. 
You know not what it is ; I do ! My 
wife's fortune came not till after 
marriage — so far, so well; it saved 
my reputation from the charge of 
fortune-hunting. But, I tell you fairly, 
that if it never came at all, I should 
be a prouder, and a greater, and a 
happier man than I have ever been, or 
ever can bo, with all its advantages ; 
it has a millstone round my neck. 

Tlie Caxtons. 



92 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

April ^6th. 
The world, the world ! — Everything 
gentle, everything pure, everything 
noble, high-wrought and holy — is to 
be squared, and cribbed, and maimed 
to the rule and measure of the world ! 
The world — are you too its slave? 
Do you not despise its hollow cant — 
its methodical hypocrisy ? 

Ernest Maltravers. 

April 36th. 
The soul really grand is only tested 
in its errors. As we know the true 
might of the intellect by the rich re- 
sources and patient strength with 
which it redeems a failure, so do we 
prove the elevation of the soul by its 
courageous return into light, its in- 
stinctive rebound into higher air, after 



FROM BULWKR LYTTON. 9:i 



some error that has darkened its vision 
and soiled its plumes. 

Harold. 

A2)ril 27th. 
A spirit loss noble and pure than 
Harold's, once entering on the dismal 
world of enchanted superstition, had 
habituated itself to that nether atmos- 
phere ; once misled from hardy truth 
and healthful reason, it had plunged 
deeper and deeper into the maze. 
But, unlike his contemporary, Mac- 
beth, the Man escaped from the lures 
of the Fiend. Not as Flocate in hell, 
but as Dian in heaven, did he confront 
the pale (} odd ess of Kight. 

Harold. 

April 28th. 
Before that hour in which he had 



94 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

deserted the human judgment for the 
ghostly delusion: before that day in 
which the brave heart, in its sudden 
desertion, had humbled his pride — the 
man, in his nature, was more strong 
than the god. Now, purified by the 
flame that had scorched, and more 
nerved from the fall that had stunned, 
— that great soul rose sublime through 
the wrecks of the Past, serene through 
the clouds of the future, concentring 
in its solitude the destinies of Man- 
kind, and strong with instinctive 
Eternity amidst all the terrors of 
Time. 

Harold. 

April '29tli. 
"No sound ever went to the heart," 
said Adrian, "whose arrow was not 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 95 

feathered by sadness. True senti- 
ment, Montreal, is twin with melan- 
choly, though not with gloom." 

Bienzi. 

April 30th. 
But what the impulse of genius is to 
the great, the instinct of vocation is to 
the mediocre. In every man there is 
a magnet; in that thing which the 
man can do best there is a loadstone. 

The Caxtons. 



MAY. 



Mwy hi. — Early Mondng. 
TiHH wjm llio [lour wliori Kv(>\yn 
iiiohI- fir,n,'iil)ly icll, how lil.Uo our nial 
liln in (•lironic-lrd hy nxhirruil o-vmils — 
how riiuch wr, livo n. H<i('oiMl jiimI n 
higher lil'n jti our iiMMlilxitiorm and 
dnmrriH. Ii»<»u/.'hl> u|), uol, nioni l>y 
|)r(HM)))i, Ui;ui oxn.tii|)h\ in Uio Ui\\\\ 
whi<*h uiii(/OH (;n«il,uro nnd (/rnaior, 
UiJH Willi Um'< liour in wliicJi l.hou^hl, it, 
Heir had HoinoLhin^- oi' Uir, holinoHH of 
prayrr; ;uid if (luruin/^ Iroui dniarrm 
diviiH) l.ooiU'Uilio.r vinioriH) MiinnJHo waH 
Um'> hour* ill whi<-h Uin iiciul. painted 
ii,n<l |)r,o|)l4Ml il,M own liiiry h'liid hnh>w 
— of Mm- Uvo i(hjal worJdH thai ntretch 
hnyoiid tlin iiK'Ji of tiino on whJcJi wo 



100 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

stand, Imagination is perhaps holier 
than Memory. 

Alice. 

Ma/y 2d. — The Spirit of the Age. 

I would make every man's conduct 
more or less mechanical ; for system is 
the triumph of mind over matter ; the 
just equilibrium of all the powers and 
passions may seem like machinery. 
Be it so. Nature meant the world — 
the creation — man himself, for ma- 
chines. 

Ernest Maltravers. 

May 3d. 
The seas of human life are wide. 
Wisdom may suggest the voyage, but 
it must first look to the condition of 
the ship, and the nature of the mer- 
chandise to exchange. Not every 



FliOM BULWER LYTTON. 101 

vessel that sails from Tarshish can 
bring back the gold of Ophir ; but 
shall it therefore rot in tlie harbor? 
No ; give its sails to the wind ! 

Tlie Caxtons. 

May Jf^th. 
In the tale of human passion, in past 
ages, there is something of interest 
even in the remoteness of the time. 
We love to feel within us the bond 
which unites the most distant eras — 
men, nations, customs perish ; the 

AFFECTIONS AKE IMMOKTAL ! — they 

are the sympathies which unite the 
ceaseless generations. The past lives 
again, when we look upon its emotions 
— it lives in our own ! That which 
was, ever is ! The magician's gift, 
that revives the dead — that animates 



102 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

the dust of forgotten graves, is not in 
the author's skill — it is in the heart of 
the reader ! 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 

May 6th. 
You never deceived man — the wide 
world says it — do not deceive woman ! 
Deeds kill men — words women ! 

The Last of the Barons. 

May 6th. 
Oh, Madeline! methinks there is 
nothing under heaven like the feeling 
which puts us apart from all that agi- 
tates, and fevers, and degrades the 
herd of men ; which grants us to con- 
trol the tenor of our future life, be- 
cause it annihilates our dependence 
upon others, and, while the rest of the 
earth are hurried on, blind and uncon- 



FE03I BULWEB LYTTON. 103 

scious, by the hand of Fate, leaves us 
the sole lords of our destiny, and able, 
from the Past, which we have gov- 
erned, to become the prophets of our 
Future ! 

Eugene Aram, 

MoA/ 7th, 
Even the most unearthly love is 
selfish in the rapture of being loved ! 

Bienzi. 

May 8th, 
IN'either man nor wood comes to the 
uses of life till the green leaves are 
stripped and the sap gone. And then 
the uses of life transform us into 
strange things with other names ; the 
tree is a tree no more — it is a gate or 
a ship ; the youth is a youth no more, 
but a one-legged soldier; a hollow- 



104 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

eyed statesman ; a scholar spectacled 

and slippered ! 

The Caxtona, 

May 9th. 
Had the early Christians been more 
controlled by " the solemn plausibili- 
ties of custom " — less of democrats in 
the pure and lofty acceptation of that 
perverted word, — Christianity would 
have perished in its cradle ! 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 

Mmj 10th. 
" It is an excitement," said Yalerie, 
"to climb a mountain, though it fa- 
tigues ; and though the clouds may even 
deny us a prospect from its summit — 
it is an excitement that gives a very 
universal pleasure, and that seems al- 
most as if it were the result of a com- 



FROM BULWER LYTTON. 105 

mon human instinct, which makes us 
desire to rise — to get above the ordi- 
nary thoroughfares and level of life. 
Some such pleasure you must have in 
intellectual ambition, in which the 
mind is the upward traveller." 

Ernest Maltravera, 

May 11th. 
Nothing is strong on earth but the 
Will; and hate to the will is as the 
iron in the hands of the war-man. 

Harold. 

May mil. 
Is there not distinction enough at 
the best ? Does not one wear purple, 
and the other rags? Ilath not one 
ease and the other toil ? Doth not the 
one banquet while the other starves ? 
Do I nourish any mad scheme to level 



106 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



the ranks which society renders a nec- 
essary evil ? No. I war no more 
with Dives than with Lazarus. l>iit 
before man's judgment-scat, as before 
God's, Lazarus and Dives are made 
equaL JNo more. 

The Last ])tx(/s of Povipcii. 

May loth. 
I have never yet found in life one 
man who made happiness his end and 
aim. One wants to gain a fortune, 
another to s}>ond it — one to get a 
phice, another to buikl a name ; but 
they all know very well that it is not 
happiness thoy search for. ]\o Utili- 
tarian was ever actuated by self-in- 
terest, poor man, when he sat down to 
scribble Ids unpopular crotchets to 



FKCm nULWER LYTTON. 107 



prove solf-interest universal. And as 
to tliJit iiolalxlo distinction — between 
seli'-in teres t vulgar and self-interest 
enliglitene(J — the more the self-interest 
is enliglitened, the less we are inllu- 
enced by it. If you tell the young 
man who has just written a line book 
or made a fine speech, that he will not 
be any hapjiier if he attain to the fame 
of Milton or the power of Pitt, and 
that, for the sake of his own happiness, 
he Jiad mucii better cultivate a farm, 
live in the country, and posti)one to 
the last the days of dyspepsia and 
gout, he will answer you fairJy: "I 
am quite as sensible of that as you are. 
But I am not thinking whether or not 
I shall be happy. I have made up my 
mind to be, if 1 can, a great author, or 



108 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

a prime minister." So it is with all 

the active sons of the world. To push 

on is the law of nature. And you can 

no more say to men and to nations 

than to children : "Sit still, and don't 

wear out your shoes." 

The Caxtom, 

May nth. 
It is an awful state of being, this 
human life ! — What is wisdom — virtue 
— faith to men — piety to Heaven — all 
the nurture we bestow on ourselves — 
all our desire to win a loftier sphere, 
when we are thus the tools of the 
merest chance — the victims of the 
pettiest villainy; and our very exist- 
ence — our very senses almost, at the 
mercy of every traitor and every fool ? 

Ernest Maltravers. 



FB03I BULWER LYTTON. 109 

May 15th, 
These vain prophecies of human wit 
guard the soul from no danger. They 
mislead us by riddles which our hot 
hearts interpret according to their own 
desires. Keep thou fast to youth's 
simple wisdom, and trust only to the 
pure spirit and the watchful God. 

Harold, 

May 16th. 
The crime — the discovery — the irre- 
mediable despair — hear me, as the 
voice of a man who is on the brink of 
a world, the awful nature of which 
reason cannot pierce — hear me ! when 
your heart tempts to some wandering 
from the line allotted to the rest of 
men, and whispers "This may be 
crime in others, but is not so in thee " 



110 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

— tremble ; cling fast, fast to the path 
you are lured to leave. Eemember 
me! 

Eugene Aram, 

May 17th. 
Alas I is it only to be among men 
that freedom and virtue are to be 
deemed united? Why should the 
slavery that destroys you be consid- 
ered the only method to preserve us ? 
Ah ! believe me, it has been the great 
error of men — and one that has 
worked bitterly on their destinies — to 
imagine that the nature of women is 
(I will not say inferior, that may be 
so, but) so different from their own, 
in making laws unfavorable to the in- 
tellectual advancement of women. 
Have they not, in so doing, made laws 



FROM BULWER LYTTON. Ill 

against their children, whom women 

are to rear ? — against the husbands, of 

whom women are to be the friends, 

nay, sometimes the advisers ? 

The Last Days of Pompeii, 

May 18th. 

" Everybody who is in earnest to be 

good carries two fairies about with 

him — one here," and he touched my 

heart, " and one here," and he touched 

my forehead. 

The Caxtons. 

May 19th. 
" It is not the ambition that pleases," 
replied Maltravers, " it is the following 
a path congenial to our tastes, and 
made dear to us in a short time by 
habit. The moments in which we 
look beyond our work, and fancy our- 



112 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

selves seated beneath the Everlasting 
Laurel, are few. It is the work itself, 
whether of action or literature, that 
interests and excites us. And at 
length the dryness of toil takes the 
familiar sweetness of custom. But in 
intellectual labor there is another 
charm — we become more intimate with 
our own nature. The heart and the 
soul grow friends, as it were, and the 
affections and aspirations unite. Thus, 
we are never without society — we are 
never alone; all that we have read, 
learned, and discovered, is company to 
us." 

Ernest Maltravers. 
MOA/ Wth. 

What love has most to dread in the 
wild heart of aspiring man, is not per- 



FE03I: BULWER LYTTON. 113 

sons, but tilings, — is not things, but 
their symbols. 

Harold. 

May ^Ist 
I see him before me, as he stood 
then — his form erect, his dark eyes 
solemn in their light, a serenity in his 
smile, a grandeur on his brow, that 
I had never marked till then! Was 
that the same man I had recoiled from 
as the sneering cynic, shuddered at as 
the audacious traitor, or wept over as 
the cowering outcast ? How little the 
nobleness of aspect depends on sym- 
metry of feature, or the mere propor- 
tions of form! What dignity robes 
the man who is filled with a lofty 
thought ! 

The Caxtons. 



114 BEAUTIFUL TBOUGHTS 

May 2M. 
But the illness of the body usually 
brings out a latent power and philoso- 
phy of the soul, which health never 
knows; and God has mercifully or- 
dained it as the customary lot of na- 
ture, that in proportion as we decline 
into the grave, the sloping path is 
made smooth and easy to our feet; 
and every day, as the films of clay are 
removed from our eyes. Death loses 
the false aspect of the spectre, and we 
fall at last into its arms as a wearied 
child upon the bosom of its mother. 

Ernest Maltravers. 

May 2Sd. 
I love not the trader spirit, man — 
the spirit that cheats, and cringes, and 
haggles, and splits straws for pence. 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 115 

and roasts eggs by other men^s blazing 
rafters. 

The Last of the Barons, 

May ^Ifih. 
For oh ! what a terrible devil creeps 
into that man's soul who sees famine 
at his door ! One tender act, and how 
many black designs, struggling into 
life within, you may crush forever! 
He who deems the world his foe, con- 
vince him that he has one friend, and 
it is like snatching a dagger from his 
hand ! 

Eugene Aram. 

May ^5th. — Westminster Bridge. 

Oh, God ! how many wild and 
stormy hearts have stilled themselves 
on that spot, for one dread instant of 
thought — of calculation — of resolve — 



116 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

one instant, the last of life ! Look at 
night along the course of that stately 
river, how gloriously it seems to mock 
the passions of them that dwell be- 
side it. Unchanged — unchanging — all 
around it quick death, and troubled 
life ; itself smiling up to the grey stars, 
and singing from its deep heart as it 
bounds along. Beside it is the Senate, 
proud of its solemn triflers, and there 
the cloistered tomb, in which, as the 
loftiest honor, some handful of the 
fiercest of the strugglers may gain 
f orgetf ulness and a grave ! There is 
no moral to a great city like the river 
that washes its walls. 

Eugene Aram. 

May '26tli. 
Say to the busiest man whom thou 



FEOM BULWER LYTTQN. 117 

seest in mart, camp, or senate, who 

seems to thee all intent upon his 

worldly schemes, "Thy home is reft 

from thee — thy household gods are 

shattered — that sweet noiseless content 

in the regular mechanism of the springs 

which set the large wheels of thy soul 

into movement is thine nevermore ! " 

— and straightway all exertion seems 

robbed of its object — all aim of its 

alluring charm. 

Harold. 

May 27th. 
What are all the rewards to my la- 
bor, now thou hast robbed me of re- 
pose? How little are all the gains 
wrung from strife, in a world of rivals 
and foes, compared to the smile whose 
sweetness I knew not till it was lost, 



118 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

and the sense of security from mortal 
ill which I took from the trust and 
sympathy of love ? 

Harold. 

May ^8th. 
The burning desires I have known — 
the resplendent visions I have nursed 
— the sublime aspirings that have 
lifted me so often from sense and clay 
— these tell me, that, whether for good 
or ill — I am the thing of an Immortal- 
ity, and the creature of a God ! 

Eugene Aram, 

May S9th. 
Nor is he whom, for high purposes, 
Heaven hath raised from the cottage 
to the popular throne, without invisi- 
ble aid and spiritual protection. If 
hereditary monarchs are deemed sa- 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 119 

cred, how much more one in whose 
power the divine hand hath writ its 
witness ! Yes, over him who lives but 
for his country, whose greatness is his 
country's gift, whose life is his coun- 
try's liberty, watch the souls of the 
just, and the unsleeping eyes of the 

s worded seraphim ! 

Bienzi. 

May 30th. — Memorial Bay. 
To be free, you must sacrifice some- 
thing ; for freedom, what sacrifice too 
great ? 

Bienzi. 

May Slst. 
Yery near are two hearts that have 
no guile between them. 

The Caxtom. 



JUNE. 



June Ist. 
Our own yoath is like that of the 
earth itself, when it peopled the woods 
and waters with divinities ; when life 
ran riot, and yet only gave birth to 
beauty ; — all its shapes of poetry, — all 
its airs, the melodies of Arcady and 
Olympus ! The Golden Age never 
leaves the world; it exists still, and 
shall exist, till love, health, poetry, are 
no more ; but only for the young ! 

Eienzi, 

June 2d. 
Not in such jaded bosoms can Na- 
ture awaken that enthusiasm which 
alone draws from her chaste reserve 
all her unspeakable beauty : she de- 



124 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



mands from you, not the exhaustion of 
passion, but all that fervor, from 
which you onl}^ seek, in adoring her, a 
release. 

The Last Days of Pompeii, 

June 3d. 
Was it the perversity of human na- 
ture, that makes the things of morality 
dearer to us in proportion as they 
fade from our hopes, like birds whoso 
hues are only unfolded when they 
take wing and vanish amidst the skies ; 
or was it that he had ever doted more 
on loveliness of mind than that of 
form, and the first bloomed out the 
more, the more the last decayed ? 

Ernest Maltravers. 

June Jt-th. 
He who is ambitious of things afar 



FR03T BULWEB LYTTON. 125 



and uncertain, passes at once into the 
Poet-Land of Imagination; to aspire 
and to imagine are yearnings twin- 
born. _ ,^ 

Harold. 

June 6th. 
Mankind are not instantaneously 
corrupted. Villainy is always pro- 
gressive. We decline from right— not 

suddenly, but step after step. 

Eugene Aram. 

June 6th. 
In a word, dear sir and friend, in 
this crowded Old World, there is not 
the same room that our bold fore- 
fathers found for men to walk about 
and jostle their neighbors. No ; they 
must sit down like boys at their form, 



126 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

and work out their tasks, with rounded 
shoulders and aching fingers. There 
has been a pastoral age, and a hunting 
age, and a fighting age. Now we have 
arrived at the age sedentary. Men 
who sit longest carry all before them : 
puny, delicate fellows, with hands just 
strong enough to wield a pen, eyes so 
bleared by the midnight lamp that they 
see no joy in that buxom sun (which 
draws me forth into the fields, as life 
draws the living), and digestive organs 
worn and macerated by the relentless 
flagellation of the brain. 

The Caxtom. 

June 7th. 
Wise is ever the counsel of him 
whose book is the human heart. 

Harold. 



FB03I BULWEB LYTTON. 127 

June 8th. 
From LITEKATUEE he imagined had 
come all that makes nations enlight- 
ened and men humane. And he 
loved Literature the more, because 
her distinctions were not those of 
the world — because she had neither 
ribands, nor stars, nor high places at 
her command. A name in the deep 
gratitude and hereditary delight of 
men — this was the title she bestowed. 
Hers was the Great Primitive Church 
of the world, without Popes or 
Muftis — sinecures, pluralities, and 
hierarchies. Her servants spoke to 
the earth as the prophets of old, 
anxious only to be heard and be- 
lieved. 

Ernest Maltravers. 



128 BEAUTIFUL TEOUOHTS 

June 9th. 
He who awaits death, dies twice. 

The Last Days of Pompeii . 

June 10 th. 
lu all these solemn riddles of the 
Jove world and the Christ's is involved 
the imperious necessity that man hath 
of repentance and atonement : through 
their clouds, as a rainbow, shines the 
covenant that reconciles the God and 
the man. 

Harold. 

June 11th. 
Observe, that, throughout the whole 
world, a great revolution has begun. 
The barbaric darkness of centuries has 
been broken; the knowledge which 
made men as demigods in the past 
time has been called from her urn ; a 



FEOM BULWEB LYTTON. 129 



Power, subtler tliiiii brute force, and 
mightier than armed men, is at work I 
we have begun once more to do hom- 
age to the Jioyalty of Mind. 

Riejizi. 

June 12th. 
We may talk of the fidelity of books, 
but no man ever wrote even his own 
biography, without being com[)elled to 
omit at least nine- tent I is of the most 
important materials. What are three 
— what six volumes? We live six 
volumes in a day ! Thought, emotion, 
joy, sorrow, hope, fear, how prolix 
would they be, if they might each tell 
their hourly tale I But man's life itself 
is a brief epitome of that which is in- 
finite and everlasting ; and his most ac- 
curate confessions are a miserable 



130 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

abridgment of a hurried and confused 
compendium ! 

Ernest Maltravera. 

June 13th. 
New laws are declared to him who 
has ears — a heaven, a true Olympus, is 
revealed to him who has eyes — heed 
then, and listen. 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 

June nth. 
Ass indeed is he who pretends to 
warn others, nor sees an inch before 
his eyes what his own fate will be ! 

Harold. 

June 15th. 
I say, then, that books, taken indis- 
criminately, are no cure to the diseases 
and afflictions of the mind. There is a 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 131 

world of science necessary in the tak- 
ing them. I have known some people 
in great sorrow fly to a novel, or the 
last light book in fashion. One might 
as well take a rose-draught for the 
plague! Light reading does not do 
when the heart is really heavy. I am 
told that Goethe, when he lost his son, 
took to study a science that was new 
to him. Ah ! Goethe was a physician 
who knew what he was about. In a 
great grief like that you cannot tickle 
and divert the mind ; you must wrench 
it away, abstract, absorb — bury it in 
an abyss, hurry it into a labyrinth. 
Therefore, for the irremediable sor- 
rows of middle life and old age, I 
recommend a strict chronic course of 
science and hard reasoning — Counter- 



132 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

irritation. Bring the brain to act upon 
the heart ! 

The Caxtona. 

June 16th. 
I fear that as yet Ernest Mal- 
travers had gained little from Experi- 
ence, except a few current coins of 
worldly wisdom (and not very valu- 
able those ! ), while he had lost much 
of that nobler wealth with which 
youthful enthusiasm sets out on the 
journey of life. Experience is an open 
giver, but a stealthy thief. There is, 
however, this to be said in her favor, 
that we retain her gifts; and if ever 
we demand restitution in earnest, 'tis 
ten to one but what we recover her 
thefts. 

Ernest Maltravera. 



FEOM BULWER LYTTON. 133 

June 17 th. 
" He died," said the Norman, sooth- 
ingly ; " but shriven and absolved ; and 
my cousin says, calm and hopeful, as 
they die ever who have knelt at the 
Saviour's tomb ! " 

Harold. 

June 18th. 
"How little a man's virtues profit 
him in the eyes of men ! " thought he. 
" The subject saves the crown, and the 
crown's wearer never pardons the pre- 
sumption ! " 

The Last of the Barona. 

June 19th. 
" God never made Genius to be 
envied ! " interrupted Yillani, with an 
energy that overcame his respect. 



134 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

" We envy not the sun, but rather the 
valleys that ripen beneath his beams." 
" Yerily, if I be the sun," said Kienzi 
with a bitter and melancholy smile, " I 
long for night, — and come it will, to 
the human as to the celestial Pilgrim ! 
— Thank Heaven at least, that our am- 
bition cannot make us immortal ! " 

Bienzi. 

June 20th. 
The tench, no doubt, considers the 
pond in which he lives as the Great 
World. There is no place, however 
stagnant, which is not the great world 
to the creatures that move about in it. 
People who have lived all their lives 
in a village still talk of the world as if 
they had ever seen it ! An old woman 
in a hovel does not put her nose out of 



FEOM BULWEB LYTTON. 135 

her door on a Sunday without think- 
ing she is going amongst the pomps 
and vanities of the great world. Ergo, 
the great world is to all of us the little 
circle in which we live. 

Ernest Maltravers. 

June '21st. 
Sir, a religious man does not want 
to reason about his religion — religion 
is not mathematics. Keligion is to be 
felt, not proved. There are a great 
many things in the religion of a good 
man which are not in the catechism. 

The Caxtona. 

June 22d. 

He was the more original because 

he sought rather after the True than 

the New. ]^o two minds are ever the 

same; and therefore any man who 



136 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

will give us fairly and frankly the re- 
sults of his own impressions, uninflu- 
enced by the servilities of imitation, 
w^ill be original. 

Ernest Maliravers. 

June ^3d. 
A man is a poor creature who is not 
in a passion sometimes; but a very 
unjust, or a very foolish one, if he be 
in a passion with the wrong person, 
and in the wrong place and time. 

Ernest Maliravers. 

J\ine 24th. 
And as gold, the adorner of the 
world, springs from the sordid bosom 
of earth, so chastity, the image of 
gold, rose bright and unsullied from 
the clay of human desire. 

Harold. 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 137 

June 25th. 
In that era of passionate and poet- 
ical romance, which Petrarch repre- 
sented rather than created, Love had 
already begun to assume a more tender 
and sacred character than it had hith- 
erto known, it had gradually imbibed 
the divine spirit which it derives from 
Christianity, and which associates its 
sorrows on earth with the visions and 
hopes of heaven. To him who relies 
upon immortality, fidelity to the dead 
is easy; because death cannot extin- 
guish hope, and the soul of the 
mourner is already half in the world 
to come. It is an age that desponds 
of a future life — representing death as 
an eternal separation — in which, if 
men grieve awhile for the dead, they 



138 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

hasten to reconcile themselves to the 
living. For true is the old aphorism, 
that love exists not without hope. 

Bienzi. 

June Mth. 
It is in sorrow or sickness that we 
learn why Faith was given as a 
soother to man — Faith, which is Hope 
with a holier name — hope that knows 
neither deceit nor death. Ah, how 
wisely do you speak of the philosophy 
of belief ! It is, indeed, the telescope 
through which the stars grow large 
upon our gaze. 

Ernest Maltravers. 

June 27th. 
Man is never wrong while he lives 
for others. The philosopher who con- 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 139 



templates from the rock is a less noble 
image than the sailor who struggles 
with the storm. 

The Caxtons. 

June ^8th.—A Lover's Farting. 
I know not, in the broken words 
that passed between us, in the sorrow- 
ful hearts which those words revealed 
— I know not if there were that which 
they who own, in human passion, but 
the storm and the whirlwind, would 
call the love of maturer years — the 
love that gives fire to the song, and 
tragedy to the stage ; but I know that 
there was neither a word nor a 
thought which made the sorrow of the 
children a rebellion to the heavenly 
Father. 

The Caxtons. 



140 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



Janr '29th. 
Thero is in a sound and correct in- 
tellect, with all its gilts fairly bal- 
anced, a calm consciousness of power, 
a cm'tainty tliaX when its strength is 
fairly put out, it must be to realize the 
usual result of strength. Men of sec- 
ond-rate faculties, on the contrar}'', are 
fretful and nervous, lidgeting after a 
celebrity wliicli tl u^y do not estimate 
by Muur own talents, but by the tal- 
ents of some one else. They see a 
tower, but are occupied only with 
uujasuring its shadow, and think their 
own height (which they never calcu- 
late) is to cast as Inroad a, one over the 
earth. It is tln^ short man who is al- 
ways throwing up his (^hin, and is as 
erect as a dart. The tall man stoops. 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 141 



and the strong man is not always 
using the dumb-bells. 



Ernest Maltravers. 



June 30th. 
The eye that would guard the living 
should not be dimmed by the vapors 
that encircle the dead. 



Harold. 



JULY. 



July 1st. 
Oh, what a crushing sense of impo- 
tence comes over us, when we feel that 
our frame cannot support our mind — 
when the hand can no longer execute 
what the soul, actively as ever, con- 
ceives and desires ! — the quick life tied 
to the dead form — the ideas fresh as 
immortality, gushing forth rich and 
golden, and the broken nerves, and the 
aching frame, and the weary eyes ! — 
the spirit athirst for liberty and heaven 
— and the damning, choking conscious- 
ness that we are walled up and prisoned 
in a dungeon that must be our burial- 
place ! Talk not of freedom — there is 
no such thing as freedom to a man 



146 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

whose body is the jail, whose infirmi- 
ties are the racks, of his genius ! 

Ernest Maltravers. 

July 2d. 
Only by the candle held in the skel- 
eton hand of Poverty can man read his 
own dark heart. 

The Last of the Barons. 

July 3d. 
I value Gold, for Gold is the Archi- 
tect of Power ! It fills the camp — it 
storms the city — it buys the market- 
place — it raises the palace — it founds 
the throne. I value Gold, — it is the 
means necessary to my end ! 

Bienzi. 

July Jith. — Independence Day. 
Depend on it, the New "World will 
be friendly or hostile to the Old, not in 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 147 

jprojportion to the hinshij^ of race^ hut in 
j^roportion to the similarity of ^manners 
and institxLtions — a mighty truth to 
which we colonizers have been blind. 

The Caxtona. 

July 6th. 
A man is a rude, coarse, sensual ani- 
mal, and requires all manner of associa- 
tions to dignify and refine him, women 
are so naturally susceptible of every- 
thing beautiful in sentiment and gen- 
erous in purpose, that she who is a 

true woman is a fit peer for a king. 

Tlie Caxtona, 

July 6th. 

No man ever so scorned its false 

gods, and its miserable creeds — its war 

upon the weak — its fawning upon the 

great — its ingratitude to benefactors — 



148 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

its sordid league with mediocrity 
against excellence. Yes, in proportion 
as I love mankind, I despise and detest 
that worse than Venetian oligarchy 
which mankind set over them and call 

" THE WOELD." 

Ernest Maltravers. 

July 7th. 
While the mind alone is occupied, 
you may be contented with the pride 
of stoicism: but there are moments 
when the heart wakens as from a sleep 
— wakens like a frightened child — to 
feel itself alone and in the dark. 

Ernest Maltravers, 

July 8th. 
I tell thee that I renounce henceforth 
all faith save in Him whose ways are 
concealed from our eyes. Thy seid 



FBOM BULWEB LYTTON. 149 

and thy galdra have not guarded me 
against peril, nor armed me against 
sin. Nay, perchance — but peace: I 
will no more tempt the dark art, I will 
no more seek to disentangle the awful 
truth from the juggling lie. All so 
foretold me I will seek to forget, — hope 
from no prophecy, fear from no warn- 
ing. Let the soul go to the future un- 
der the shadow of God ! 

Harold. 

July 9th. 
When — when will these hideous dis- 
parities be banished from the world ? 
How many noble natures — how many 
glorious hopes — how much of the ser- 
aph's intellect, have been crushed into 
the mire, or blasted into guilt, by the 
mere force of physical want? "What 



150 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

are the temptations of the rich to those 
of the poor ? Yet see how lenient we 
are to the crimes of the one, — how re- 
lentless to those of the other I 

Eugene Aram. 

July 10th. 
There is a stern truth which is 
stronger than all Spartan lessons — 
Poverty ^6" the master-ill of the Avorld. 
Look round. Does poverty leave its 
signs over the graves ? Look at that 
large tomb fenced round ; read that 
long inscription : " Virtue " — " best of 
husbands " — '' affectionate father " — 
"inconsolable grief" — "sleeps in the 
joyful hope,'' etc., etc. Do you sup- 
pose these stoneless mounds hide no 
dust of what were men just as good ? 
But no epitaph tells their virtues, be- 



FROM BULWER LYTTON. 151 

speaks thoir wives' grief, or promises 

joyful hope to them I 

Does it matter ? Does God care for 

the epitaph and tombstone ? 

Tlie Caxtons. 

July 11th. 
Their talk now was only of their 
love. Over the rapture of the present 
the hopes of the future glowed like the 
heaven above the gardens of spring. 
They went in their trustful thoughts 
far down the stream of time : they laid 
out the chart of their destiny to come ; 
they sulFercd the light of to-day to 
suffuse the morrow. In the youth of 
their hearts it seemed as if care, and 
change, and death, were as things un- 
known. 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 



152 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

July mil. 
" Ye mystic lights," said he, solilo- 
quizing ; " worlds upon worlds — infinite 
— incalculable. Bright defiers of rest 
and change, rolling forever above our 
petty sea of mortality, as, wave after 
wave, we fret forth our little life, and 
sink into the black abyss ; — can we look 
upon you, note your appointed order, 
and your unvarying course, and not 
feel that we are indeed the poorest 
puppets of an all-pervading and resist- 
less destiny ? 

Eugene Aram. 

July 13th. 
Is that too masculine a spirit for 
some ? Let each please himself. Give 
me the woman who can echo all 
thoughts that are noblest in men ! 

The Caxtons. 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 153 

July Htli. 
When we have commenced a career, 
what stop is there till the grave? — 
where is the definite barrier of that am- 
bition which, like the eastern bird, 
seems ever on the wing, and never 
rests upon the earth. 

Ernest Maltravers. 



July 15th. 

Man is arrogant in proportion to his 

ignorance. 

Zanoni. 



July 16th. 

The man who hath served me wrongs 

me till I have served him again ! 

The Last of the Barons. 



154 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

July 17th. 
Conduct — conduct — conduct — there 
lies my talent ; and what is conduct but 
a steady walk from a design to its exe- 
cution I 

Ernest Maltravers, 

July 18th. 

Poor is the strength of body — a web 

of law can entangle it, and a word from 

a priest's mouth can palsy. 

Harold, 

July 19th. 
HoAV a man past thirty foils a man 
scarcely twenty ! — what superiority the 
mere fact of living-on gives to the dull- 
est dog I 

The Caxtons. 

July Wth. 
It is a fearful thing to see men weep I 

Eugene Aram. 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 155 



Jtoly ^Ist 
There seems something intuitive in 
the science wliich teaches us the 
knowledge of our race. Some men 
emerge from their seclusion, and find, 
all at once, a power to dart into the 
minds and drag forth the motives of 
those they see ; it is a sort of second 
sight, born with them, not acquired. 

Eugene Aram. 

July nd. 
Had I lived more with men, and 
less with dreams and books, I should 
have made my nature large enough 
to bear the loss of a single passion. 
But in solitude we shrink up. Ko 
plant so much as man needs the sun 
and the air. 

The Caxtons. 



156 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



July 23d. 
Love should have implicit oonfu 
dence as its bond and nature — and 
jealousy is doubt, and doubt is the 
death of love. 

Ernest Maltravers. 

July ^ith. 
As ashes cannot be rekindled — as 
love once dead can never revive, so 
freedom departed from a people is 
never regained. 

The Lost Days of Pompeii, 

July 25th. 
Of all the conditions to which the 
heart is subject, suspense is the one 
that most gnaws and cankers into the 
frame. One little month of that sus- 
pense, when it involves death, we are 
told, in a ver}^ remarkable work lately 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 157 



published by an eyewitness, is suffi- 
cient to plough fixed lines and fur- 
rows in the face of a convict of five- 
and-twenty — sufficient to dash the 
brown hair with grey, and to bleach 
the grey to white. 

Eugene Aram. 

Jtdy ^6th. 
Is it a crime to murder man? — a 
greater crime to murder thought, 
which is the life of all men. 

The Last of the Barons. 

July 27th. 
It is not study alone that produces 
a writer ; it is intensity. In the mind, 
as in yonder chimney, to make the fire 
burn hot and quick, you must narrow 
the draft. 

The Caxtons. 



158 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

July 28th. 
The moment we lose forethought, 
we lose sight of a duty ; and though 
it seems like a paradox, we can sel- 
dom be careless without being selfish. 

Ernest Maltravers. 

July 29th. 
'Tis a winning thing, sir, a garden ! 
— It brings us an object every day; 
and that's what I think a man ought 
to have if he wishes to lead a happy 
life. 

Eugene Aram. 

July 30th. 
The great struggles in life are 
limited moments. In the drooping 
of the head upon the bosom, in the 
pressure of the hand upon the brow, 
we may scarcely consume a second 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 159 

in our threescore years and ten; but 
what revolutions of our whole being 
may pass within us while that single 
sand drops noiseless down to the bot- 
tom of the hour-glass ! 

The Caxtom. 

July 31st. 
Thou art wise in the lore of the 
heart and love hath been thy study 
from youth to grey hairs. Is it love, 
is it hate, that prefers death for the 
loved one, to the thought of her life 
as another's ? 

Harold. 



AUGUST. 



August 1st. 
The situation of a Patrician who 
honestly loves the people is, in those 
evil times, when power oppresses and 
freedom struggles, — when the two 
divisions of men are wrestling against 
each other, — the most irksome and 
perplexing their destiny can possibly 
contrive ! Shall he take part with the 
nobles? — he betrays his conscience! 
"With the people ? — he deserts his 
friends ! 

Bienzi. 

August '2d. 
A baker is not to be called venal if 
he sells his loaves — he is venal if he 
sells himself. 

Tht Caxtons. 



164 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

August 3d. 
However we may darken and puzzle 
ourselves with fancies and visions, and 
the ingenuities of fanatical mysticism, 
no man can mathematically or syllo- 
gistically contend that the world 
which a God made, and a Saviour 
visited, was designed to be damned ! 

Ernest Maltravers. 

August ith. 
I shudder not at the creed of others. 
I dare not curse them — I pray the 

Great Father to convert. 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 

August 5th. 
One thing, however, is quite clear — 
that, whether Fortune be more like 
Plutus or an angel, it is no use abusing 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 165 

her — one may as well throw stones at 
a star. And I think, if one looked 
narrowly at her operations, one might 
perceive that she gives every man a 
chance, at least once in his life ; if he 
take and make the best of it, she will 
renew her visits, if not, itur ad astra ! 

The Caxtons. 

Aitgust 6th. 
But they were both alike in one 
thing — they were not with the Future, 
they were sensible of the Present — the 
sense of the actual life, the enjoyment 
of the breathing time, was strong 
within them. Such is the privilege of 
the extremes of our existence — Youth 
and Age. Middle life is never with 
to-day, its home is in to-morrow . . . 
anxious, and scheming, and desiring, 



166 BEAUTIFUL TBOUQHTS 



and wishing this plot ripened and that 
hope fulfilled, while every wave of the 
forgotten Time brings it nearer and 
nearer to the end of all things. Half 
our life is consumed in longing to be 
nearer death. 

Ernest MaUravns. 

Augitst 7th. 
For we should be as old men before 
we engage, and as youths when we wish 
to perform. 

Harold. 

August 8th. 
Too mean I — go to ! — there is noth- 
ing mean before God, unless it bo a 
base soul under high titles. With me, 
boy, there is but one nobility, and 
Nature signs its charter. 

Riemi. 



FROM BULWER LYTTON. 167 

August 0th. 
Kill me! — not my thought ! 

The Last of the Baro7i8. 

August 10 th. 
What an incalculable field of dread 
and sombre contemplation is opened to 
every man who, with his heart disen- 
gaged from himself, and his eyes 
accustomed to the sharp observance 
of his tribe, walks through the streets 
of a great city ! What a world of 
dark and troublous secrets in the 
breast of every one who hurries by 
you! Goethe has said somewhere, 
that each of us, the best as the worst, 
hides within him something — some 
feeling, some remembrance that, if 
known, would make you hate him. 

Eugene Aram. 



168 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

August 11th. 
I advanced, and beheld a spectacle 
of such agony, as can only be con- 
ceived by those who have looked on 
tlie grief which takes no fortitude 
from reason, no consolation from con- 
science — the grief which tells us what 
would be the earth were man aban- 
doned to his passions, and the chance 
of the atheist reigned alone in the 
merciless heavens. Pride humbled to 
the dust ; ambition shivered into frag- 
ments; love (or the passion mis- 
taken for it) blasted into ashes; life, 
at the first onset, bereaved of its 
holiest ties, forsaken by its truest 
guide! shame that writhed for re- 
venge, and remorse that knew not 
prayer— all, all blended, yet distinct. 



FROM JiULWKR LYTTON. 169 



were in that avvlul spectaclo of tlio 

guilty son. 

The Caxtona. 

August l^th. 
Night, to tho earnest soul, opens the 
bil)h3 of tho universe, and on the Uiaves 
of Heaven is written — *' God is every- 
where I " 

The Last of the liaronn. 

A m/uH mh. 
Tell a man, in the full tide of his 
triumphs, that he bears death within 
him ; and what crisis of thought can 
be more startling and more terrible ! 

ErncM MnltraverH. 

A uquHt 1J,th. 
The good pilot wins his way through 
all winds, and the brave heart fastens 
fate to its flag. 

Harold. 



170 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Augicst 15tli. 
Human life is compared to the circle 
— Is the simile just? — All lines that are 
drawn from the centre to touch the 
circumference, by the law of the circle, 
are equal. But the lines that are 
drawn from the heart of the man to 
the verge of his destiny — do they equal 
each other ? — Alas ! some seem so 
brief, and some lengthen on as for- 
ever. 

Ernest Maltravers. 

August 16th. 
There is but one philosophy (though 
there are a thousand schools), and its 
name is Fortitude. 
"to bear is to conquer our fate ! " 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 171 

August 17 th. 
So is it ever in life : mortal things 
fade; immortal things spring more 
freshly with every step to the tomb. 

The Caxtons. 

August 18th. 
He who himself betrays, cannot call 
vengeance treason ! 

The Last of the Barons. 

August 19th. 
Humph! — when nobles are hated, 
and soldiers are bought, a mob may, 
in any hour, become the master. An 
honest people and a weak mob, — a 
corrupt people and a strong mob. 

Bienzi. 

August 20th. 
The end of a scientific morality is 
not to serve others only, but also to 



172 BEAUTIFUL THOUOETS 

perfect and accomplish our individual 

selves; our own souls are a solemn 

trust to our own lives. 

Ernest Maltravers. 

August ^Ist. 

Master books, but do not let them 

master you. Eead to live, not live to 

read. 

The Caxtons. 

August 22d. 
Whoever strives to know learns 
that no human lore is despicable. 
Despicable only you — ye fat and 
bloated things — slaves of luxury — 
sluggards in thought — who, cultivating 
nothing but the barren sense, dream 
that its poor soil can produce alike the 
myrtle and the laurel. InTo, the wise 
only can enjoy — to us only true luxury 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 173 



is given, when mind, brain, invention, 
experience, thought, learning, imagi- 
nation, all contribute like rivers to 
swell the seas of sense ! 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 

August 23 d. 
What royal robe so invests with im- 
perial majesty the form of man as the 
grave sense of power responsible, in an 
earnest soul ? 

Harold. 

August ^Jpth. 
It is the Senior, of from two to ten 
years, that most seduces and enthrals 
us. He has the same pursuits — views, 
objects, pleasures, but more art and 
experience in them all. He goes with 
us in the path we are ordained to 



174 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

tread, but from which the elder gener- 
ation desires to warn us off. There is 
very little influence where there is not 
great sympathy. 

Ernest Maltr avers. 

August 25th. 
Who shall describe those awful and 
mysterious moments, when man, with 
all his fiery passions, turbulent 
thoughts, wild hopes, and despondent 
fears, demands the solitary audience 
of his Maker ? 

Bienzi, 

August 26th. 
When Fate selects her human 
agents, her dark and mysterious spirit 
is at work within them ; she moulds 
their hearts, she exalts their energies, 
she shapes them to the part she has 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 175 

allotted them, and renders the mortal 

instrument worthy of the solemn end. 

Eugene Aram. 

August 27th. 
We should begin life with books; 
they multiply the sources of employ- 
ment ; so does capital ; — but capital is 
of no use, unless we live on the inter- 
est, — books are waste paper, unless we 
spend in action the wisdom we get 

from thought. 

Ernest Maltravers. 

August 28th. 
All that wakes curiosity is wisdom, 
if innocent — all that pleases the fancy 
now, turns hereafter to love or to 
knowledge. 

The Caxtona. 



176 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

August Wth. 
Mne times out of ten it is over the 
Bridge of Sighs that we pass the nar- 
row gulf from Youth to Manhood. 
That interval is usually occupied by 
an ill-placed or disappointed affection. 
We recover, and we find ourselves a 
new being. The intellect has become 
hardened by the fire through which 
it has passed. The mind profits by the 
wrecks of every passion, and we may 
measure our road to wisdom by the 
sorrows we have undergone. 

Ernest Maltravers. 

August 30th. 

As the moon plays upon the waves, 

and seems to our eyes to favor with a 

peculiar beam one long track amidst 

the waters, leaving the rest in com- 



FliOM BULWEB LYTTON. 177 



parative obscurity ; yet all the while, 
she is no niggard in her lustre— for 
though the rays that meet not our 
eyes seem to us as though they were 
not, yet she with an equal and unf avor- 
ing loveliness, mirrors herself on every 
wave: even so, perhaps. Happiness falls 
with the same brightness and power 
over the whole expanse of life, though 
to our limited eyes she seems only to 
rest on those billows from which the 
ray is reflected back upon our sight. 

Eugene Aram. 

August 31st. 
For few, alas! are they, whose 
names may outlive the grave ; but the 
thoughts of every man who writes, are 
made undying ;— others appropriate, 
advance, exalt them ; and millions of 



178 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



minds unknown, uiulri^anied of, are re- 
quired to pi-oduco the immortality of 
one I 



Eienzi. 



SEr^TEMBER. 



September 1st. 
I WAS always an early riser. 
Happy the man who is! Every 
morning day comes to him with a 
virgin's love, full of bloom, and 
purity, and freshness. The youth of 
ITature is contagious, like the gladness 
of a happy child. I doubt if any man 
can be called "old " so long as he is an 
early riser and an early walker. And, 
oh Youth — take my word of it — youth 
in dressing-gown and slippers, dawd- 
ling over breakfast at noon, is a very 
decrepit, ghastly image of that youth 
which sees the sun blush over the 
mountains, and the dews sparkle upon 
blossoming hedgerows. 

TAe Caxtons. 



182 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

SepteTriber 2d. 
Custom surely blunts us to every 
chance, every danger, that may happen 
to us hourly, were the avalanche over 
you for a day, — I grant your state of 
torture, — but had an avalanche rested 
over you for years, and not yet fallen, 
you would forget that it could ever 
fall; you would eat, sleep, and make 
love, as if it were not ! 

Eugene Aram. 

September 3d. 
The biographies of Authors, those 
ghostlike beings who seem to have had 
no life but in the shadow of their own 
haunting and imperishable thoughts, 
dimmed the inspiration he might have 
caught from their pages. Those Slaves 
of the Lamp, those Silk-worms of the 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 183 

Closet, how little had they enjoyed, 
how little had they lived ! Condemned 
to a mysterious fate by the wholesale 
destinies of the world, they seemed 
born but to toil and to spin thoughts 
for the common crowd — and, their 
task performed in drudgery and in 
darkness, to die when no further serv- 
ice could be wrung from their exhaus- 
tion, l^ames had they been in life, 
and as names they lived forever, in 
life as in death, airy and unsubstantial 
phantoms. 

Ernest Maltravers. 

September J^th. 
There is something, Lester, hum- 
bling to human pride in a rustic's life. 
It grates against the heart to think of 
the tone in which we unconsciously 



184 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

permit ourselves to address him. We 
see in him humanity in its simple 
gtate ; it is a sad thought to feel that 
we despise it ; that all we respect in 
our species is what has been created 
by art ; the gaud}^ dress, the glittering 
equipage, or even the cultivated intel- 
lect ; the mere and naked material of 
Nature we eye with indifference or 
trample on with disdain. 

Eugene Aram. 

Se-ptemher 6th. 
Poor child of toil, from the grey 
dawn to the setting sun, one long 
task! — no idea elicited — no thought 
awakened beyond those that suffice to 
make him the machine of others — the 
serf of the hard soil ! And then, too, 
mark how we scowl upon his scanty 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 185 

holidays, how we hedge in his mirth 
with laws, and turn his hilarity into 
crime ! We make the whole of the 
gay world, wherein we walk and take 
our pleasure, to him a place of snares 
and perils. If he leave his labor for 
an instant, in that instant how many 
temptations spring up to him ! And 
yet we have no mercy for his errors ; 
the jail — the transport-ship — the gal- 
lows ; those are our sole lecture-books, 
and our only methods of expostulation. 

Eugene Aram. 

September 6th. 
Fie on the disparities of the world ! 
They cripple the heart, they blind the 
sense, they concentrate the thousand 
links between man and man into the 
two basest of earthly ties — servility 



186 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

and pride. Methinks the devils laugh 
out when they hear us tell the boor 
that his soul is as glorious and eternal 
as our own; and yet when in the 
grinding drudgery of his life, not a 
spark of that soul can be called forth ; 
when it sleeps, walled around in its 
lumpish clay, from the cradle to the 
grave, without a dream to stir the 
deadness of its torpor. 

Eugene Aram. 

September' 7th. 
Action, Maltravers, action; that is 
the life for us. At our age we have 
passion, fancy, sentiment; we can't 
read them away, nor scribble them 
away ; we must live upon them gener- 
ously, but economically. 

Ernest Maltravers. 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 187 

September 8th, 
When one man is resolved to know 
another, it is almost impossible to pre- 
vent him : we see daily the most re- 
markable instances of perseverance on 
one side conquering distaste on the 
other. 



September 9th. 
No ; I don't say that it is an inevi- 
table law that man should not be 
happy ; but it is an inevitable law that 
a man, in spite of himself, should live 
for something higher than his own 
happiness. He cannot live in himself 
or for himself, however egotistical he 
may try to be. Every desire he has 
links him with others. Man is not a 
machine — he is a part of one. 

The Caxtons. 



188 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

September 10th. 
Three things are ever silent: 
Thought, Destiny, and the Grave. 

Harold, 



September 11th. 
We are here but as schoolboys, 
whose life begins where school ends ; 
and the battles we fought with our 
rivals, and the toys that we shared 
with our playmates, and the names 
that we carved, high or low, on the 
wall, above our desks — will they so 
much bestead us hereafter? As new 
fates crowd upon us, can they more 
than pass through the memory with a 
smile or a sigh? Look back to thy 
school-days, and answer. 

The Caxtons. 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 189 

September l^tli. 
A vulgar boy requires Heaven 
knows what assiduity to move three 
steps — I do not say like a gentleman, 
but like a body that has a soul in it ; 
but give the least advantage of society 
or tuition to a peasant girl, and a hun- 
dred to one but she will glide into re- 
finement before the boy can make a 
bow without upsetting the table. 

Ernest Maltravera. 

/September ISth. 
O literal ratiocinator, and dull to the 
true logic of Attic irony ! can't you 
comprehend that an affection may be 
genuine as felt by the man, yet its 
nature be spurious in relation to 
others ? A man may genuinely be- 



190 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

lieve he loves his fellow-creatures, 
when he roasts them like Torquemada, 
or guillotines them like St. Just ! 

The Caxtons. 

September l^th. 
Every cheek was flushed — every 
tongue spoke: the animation of the 
orator had passed, like a living spirit, 
into the breasts of the audience. He 
had thundered against the disorders of 
the patricians, yet, by a word, he had 
disarmed the anger of the plebeians — 
he had preached freedom, yet he had 
opposed license. lie had calmed the 
present, by a promise of the future. 
He had chid their quarrels, yet had 
supported their cause. He had mas- 
tered the revenge of to-day by a sol- 
emn assurance that there should come 



FROM BULWEB LYTTOK 191 

justice for the morrow. So great may 
be the power, so mighty the eloquence, 
so formidable the genius, of one man 
— without arms, without rank, without 
sword or ermine, who addresses him- 
self to a people that is oppressed ! 

liienzi. 

September ISth. 
All great knavery is madness ! The 
world could not get on if truth and 
goodness were not the natural tenden- 
cies of sane minds. 

27ie Caxtons. 

September 16th. 

Oh, my dear brother, what minds 

like yours should guard against the 

most is not the meanness of evil — it is 

the evil that takes false nobility, by 



192 BEAUTIFUL TJff OUGHTS 

garbing itself in the royal magnifi- 
cence of good. 

The Caxtons. 



Septemher 17th. 
The great secret of eloquence, is to 
be in earnest ; the great secret of 
Kienzi's eloquence was in the mighti- 
ness of his enthusiasm. He never 
spoke as one who doubted of success. 
Perhaps, like most men who undertake 
high and great actions, he himself was 
never thoroughly aware of the ob- 
stacles in his way. He saw the end, 
bright and clear, and overleaped, in 
the vision of his soul, the crosses and 
the length of the path ; thus the deep 
convictions of his own mind stamped 
themselves irresistibly upon others. 



FBOM BULWEB LYTTON. 193 

He seemed less to promise than to 
prophesy. 

Bienzi, 

September 18th. 
In our estimate of the ills of life, we 
never suificiently take into our consid- 
eration the wonderful elasticity of our 
moral frame, the unlooked for, the 
startling facility with which the hu- 
man mind accommodates itself to all 
change of circumstance, making an ob- 
ject and even a joy from the hardest 
and seemingly the least redeemed con- 
ditions of fate. 

Eugene Aram. 

September 19th. 
Let any man look over his past life, 
let him recall not moments, not hours 
of agony, for to them Custom lends 



194 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

not her blessed magic; but let him 
single out some lengthened period of 
physical or moral endurance ; in has- 
tily reverting to it, it may seem at 
first, I grant, altogether wretched ; a 
series of days marked with the black 
stone, — the clouds without a star; — 
but let him look more closely, it was 
not so during the time of suffering ; a 
thousand little things, in the bustle of 
life, dormant and unheeded, then 
started forth into notice, and became 
to him objects of interest or diversion ; 
the dreary present, once made familiar, 
glided away from him, not less than if 
it had been all happiness; his mind 
dwelt not on the dull intervals, but 
the stepping-stone it had created and 
placed at each ; and, by that moral 



FEOM BULWEB LYTTON. 195 

dreaming which forever goes on within 
man's secret heart, he lived as little in 
the immediate world before him, as in 
the most sanguine period of his youth, 
or the most scheming of his maturity. 

Eugene Aram. 

Septemher Wth. 
" Good sense," said he one day to 
Maltravers, ''is not a merely intellec- 
tual attribute. It is rather the result 
of a just equilibrium of all our facul- 
ties, spiritual and moral. The dishon- 
est, or the toys of their own passions, 
may have genius ; but they rarely, if 
ever, have good sense in the conduct 
of life. They may often win large 
prizes, but it is by a game of chance, 
not skill. But the man whom I per- 
ceive walking an honorable and up- 



196 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

right career — just to others, and also 
to himself (for we owe justice to our- 
selves — to the care of our fortunes, our 
character — to the management of our 
passions) — is a more dignified repre- 
sentative of his Maker than the mere 
child of genius. 

Ernest Maltravers. 

jSeptemher 21st. 
Of such a man, we say, he has good 
SENSE ; yes, but he has also integrity, 
self-respect, and self-denial. A thou- 
sand trials which his sense braves and 
conquers, are temptations also to his 
probity — his temper — in a word, to all 
the many sides of his complicated na- 
ture. ]^ow, I do not think he will 
have this good se7ise any more than a 
drunkard will have strong nerves, un- 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 197 

less he be in the constant habit of 
keeping his mind clear from the intox- 
ication of envy, vanity, and the various 
emotions that dupe and mislead us. 
Good sense is not, therefore, an ab- 
stract quality or a solitary talent ; but 
it is the natural result of the habit of 
thinking justly, and therefore seeing 
clearly, and is as different from the 
sagacity that belongs to a diplomatist 
or attorney, as the philosophy of Soc- 
rates differed from the rhetoric of 
Gorgias. As a mass of individual ex- 
cellencies make up this attribute in a 
man, so a mass of such men thus char- 
acterized give a character to a nation. 

Ernest Maltravera. 

jSeptemher 22d. 
And out from all these speculations, 



198 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

to which I do such hurried and scanty 
justice, he drew the blessed truth, that 
carries hope to the land of the Caffre, 
the hut of the Bushman — that there is 
nothing in the flattened skull and the 
ebon aspect that rejects God's law — 
improvement ; that by the same prin- 
ciple which raises the dog, the lowest 
of animals in its savage state, to the 
highest after man — viz, admixture of 
race — you can elevate into nations of 
majesty and power the outcasts of hu- 
manity, now your compassion or your 

scorn. 

The Caxtona. 

/Septemher 23d. 
The worst fatigue is that which 
comes without exercise. 

Ernest Maliravers. 



FROM BULWER LYTTON. 199 

Bejptember ^Iith. 
But he who admits Ambition to the 
companionship of Love, admits a giant 
that outstrides the gentler footsteps of 
its comrade. 

Harold. 

SejptembeT ^5th. 
" Forget ! " said Aram, stopping ab- 
ruptly; "ay, forget — it is a strange 
truth ! we do forget ! the summer 
passes over the furrow, and the corn 
springs up ; the sod forgets the flower 
of the past year; the battlefield for- 
gets the blood that has been spilt upon 
its turf ; the sky forgets the storm ; 
and the water the noonday sun that 
slept upon its bosom. All ISTature 
preaches forgetfulness. Its very order 
is the progress of oblivion. 

Eugene Aram. 



200 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

September 26th. 
He who never despairs seldom com- 
pletely fails. 

Kenelm Chillingly. 



September 27th. 
Do you ever see a man in any soci- 
ety sitting mute for hours, and not 
feel an uneasy curiosity to penetrate 
the wall he thus builds up between 
others and himself ? Does he not in- 
terest you far more than the brilliant 
talker at your left — the airy wit at 
your right, whose shafts fall in vain 
on the sullen barrier of the silent 
man ! Silence, dark sister of Nox and 
Erebus, how, layer upon layer, shadow 
upon shadow, blackness upon black- 
ness, thou stretchest thyself from hell 



FROM BULWER LYTTON. 201 



to heaven, over thy two chosen haunts 
—man's heart and the grave ! 

The Caxtons. 

Septemher 28th. 
Ah! do not fancy that in lovers' 
quarrels there is any sweetness that 
compensates the sting. 

Ernest Maltravers. 

Septemler 29th. 
God made us, not to indulge only in 
crystal pictures, weave idle fancies, 
pine alone, and mourn over what we 
cannot help— but to be alert and ac- 
tive — givers of happiness. 

The Caxtons. 

Septem.her 20th. 
The pen is mightier than the sword. 

Richelieu, 



OCTOBER. 



October 1st, 
Theee is something so unselfish in 
tempers reluctant to despond. You 
see that such persons are not occupied 
with their own existence ; they are not 
fretting the calm of the present life 
with the egotisms of care, and con- 
jecture, and calculation ; if they learn 
anxiety, it is for another ; but in the 
heart of that other, how entire is their 

trust ! 

Eugene Aram. 

October M. 

Less terrible is it to find the body 

wasted, the features sharp with the 

great life-struggle, than to look on the 

face from which the mind is gone— 



206 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

the eyes in which there is no recogni- 
tion. Such a sight is a startling shock 
to that unconscious habitual material- 
ism with which we are apt familiarly 
to regard those we love ; for in thus 
missing the mind, the heart, the affec- 
tion that sprang to ours, we are sud- 
denly made aware that it was the 
something within the form, and not 
the form itself, that was so dear to us. 
The form itself is still, perhaps, little 
altered ; but that lip which smiles no 
welcome, that eye which wanders over 
us as strangers, that ear which distin- 
guishes no more our voices — the friend 
we sought is not there ! Even our 
own love is chilled back — grows a kind 
of vague superstitious terror. Yes, it 
was not the matter, still present to us. 



FBOM BULWEB LYTTON. 207 

which had conciliated all those subtle 
nameless sentiments which are classed 
and fused in the word " affection^'' it 
was the airy, intangible, electric some- 
thing^ the absence of which now ap- 
pals us. 

Tlie Caxtons. 

October 3d. 
The influence of fate seems so small 
on the man who, in erring, but errs as 
the egoist, and shapes out of ill some 
use that can profit himself. But Fate 
hangs a shadow so vast on the heart 
that errs but in venturing abroad, and 
knows only in others the sources of 
sorrow and joy. 

Ernest Maltravers. 

October liili. 
Shame is not in the loss of other 



208 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

men's esteem, — it is in the loss of our 
own. 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 

October 5th. 
In the pure heart of a girl loving for 
the first time — love is far more ecstatic 
than in man, inasmuch as it is un- 
fevered by desire — love then and there 
makes the only state of human exist- 
ence which is at once capable of calm- 
ness and transport. 

Eugene Aram. 

October 6th. 
Things seem to approximate to God 
in proportion to their vitality and 
movement. Of all things, least inert 
and sullen should be the soul of man. 
How the grass grows up over the very 



FEOM BULWEB LYTTON. 209 

graves — quickly it grows and greenly 
— but neither so quick nor so green, 
my Blanche, as hope and comfort from 
human sorrows. 

The Caxtons. 

October 7th. 
It is in small states that glory is 
most active and pure, — the more con- 
fined the limits of the circle, the more 
ardent the patriotism. In small states, 
opinion is concentrated and strong, — 
every eye reads your actions — your 
public motives are blended with your 
private ties, — every spot in your nar- 
row sphere is crowded with forms 
familiar since your childhood, — the 
applause of your citizens is like the 
caresses of your friends. 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 



210 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

October 8th. 
The haughty woman who can stand 
alone and requires no leaning-place in 
our heart, loses the spell of her sex. 

Ernest MaUravers. 

October 9th. 
Genius is essentially honest. 

Ernest MaUravers, 

October 10th. 
For, despite Helvetius, a common 
experience teaches us that though 
education and circumstances may 
mould the mass, Nature herself some- 
times forms the individual, and throws 
into the clay, or its spirit, so much of 
beauty or deformity, that nothing can 
utterly subdue the original elements of 
character. 

Ernest MaUravers, 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 211 

October 11th. 

No son of fortune, no man placing 

himself and the world in antagonism, 

can ever escape from some belief in the 

invisible. Caesar could ridicule and 

profane the mystic rights of Koman 

mythology, but he must still believe in 

\A^ fortune. 

Harold. 

Octoler 12th. — Discovery of America. 
Thou beautiful land ! Canaan of 
the exiles, and Ararat to many a shat- 
tered Ark ! Fair cradle of a race for 
whom the unbounded heritage of a 
future, that no sage can conjecture, no 
prophet divine, lies afar in the golden 
promise-light of Time ! — destined, per- 
chance, from the sins and sorrows of a 
civilization struggling with its own 



212 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

elements of decay, to renew the youth 
of the world, and transmit the great 
soul of England through the cycles of 
Infinite Change. All climates that 
can best ripen the products of earth, 
or form into various character and 
temper the different families of man, 
" rain influences " from the heaven 
that smiles so benignly on those who 
had once shrunk ragged from the wind, 
or scowled on the thankless sun. 

• The Caxtons. 

October 13th. 
I do think it requires a great sense 
of religion, or, at all events, children 
of one's own, in whom one is young 
again, to reconcile oneself to becom- 
ing old. 

The Caxtons. 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 213 



October Hth. 

Harold's Prayer hefore the Battle of 
Hastings, Fought on Octoler Hth, 
1066 : 

O Lord of Hosts— We Children of 
Doubt and Time, trembling in the 
dark, dare not take to ourselves to 
question Thine unerring will. Sorrow 
and death, as joy and life, are at the 
breath of a mercy divine, and a wis- 
dom all-seeing : and out of the hours 
of evil Thou drawest, in mystic circle, 
the eternity of Good. " Thy will be 
done on earth, as it is in heaven." If, 
O Disposer of events, our human 
prayers are not adverse to Thy pre- 
judged decrees, protect these lives, the 
bulwarks of our homes and altars, sons 
whom the land offers as a sacrifice. 



214 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

May Thine angel turn aside the blade 
— as of old from the heart of Isaac ! 
But if, O Kuler of E"ations, in whose 
sight the ages are as moments, and 
generations but as sands in the sea, 
these lives are doomed, may the death 
expiate their sins, and, shrived on the 
battlefield, absolve and receive the 
soul! 

Harold. 

October 15th. 
Come, I will tell you the one secret 
of my public life — that which explains 
all its failure (for, in spite of my posi- 
tion, I have failed) and its regrets — / 
want conviction ! 

Tlie Caxions. 

October 16th. — Heaven. 
"There," thought the musing 



FROM BULWER LYTTON. 215 

maiden, "cruelty and strife shall 
cease — there, vanish the harsh dif- 
ferences of life — there, those whom 
we have loved and lost are found, and 
through the Son, who tasted of mortal 
sorrow, we are raised to the home of 
the Eternal Father ! " 

The Last of the Barons. 



Octoher mh.—The Same. 
"And there," thought the aspiring 
sage, "the mind, dungeoned and 
chained below, rushes free into the 
realms of space — there, from every 
mystery falls the veil — there, the 
Omniscient smiles on those who, 
through the darkness of life, have fed 
that lamp — the soul — there. Thought, 



216 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

but the seed on earth, bursts into the 
flower, and ripens to the fruit ! " 

The Last of the Barom. 

October ISth. 
Life is a sleep in which we dream 
most at the commencement and the 
close — the middle part absorbs us too 
much for dreams. 

Ernest Maltravers. 

October 19th. 
Perhaps I would rather dream of 
him, such as I would have him, than 
know him for what he is. He might 
be unkind, or ungenerous, or love me 
but little ; rather Avould I not be loved 
at all, than loved coldly, and eat away 
my heart by comparing it with his. I 
can love him now as something ab- 
stract, unreal, and divine : but what 



FBOM BULWER LYTTON. 217 



would be my shame, my grief, if I 
were to find him less than I have im- 
agined ! Then, indeed, my life would 
have been wasted : then, indeed, the 
beauty of the earth would be gone ! 

Bienzi, 

October Wth. 
Soldiers brave not the dangers that 
are braved by a wise man in an un- 
wise age ! 

The Last of the Barons. 

October 2 1st. 
How incalculable — how measureless 
— how viewless the consequences of one 
crime, even when we think we have 
weighed them all with scales that 
would have turned with a hair's 
weight ! 

Eugene Aram. 



218 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



October 

De-fine-gentlemanize yourself from 

the crown of your head to the sole of 

your foot, and become the greatest 

aristocrat for so doing ; for he is more 

than an aristocrat, he is a king, who 

suffices in all things for himself — who 

is his own master, because he wants no 

valetaille. 

The Caxtons. 

Oetoher 23d. 
Stop there, Mr. Simcox. Never mind 
the devil yet awhile. Let her first 
learn to do good, that God may love 
her; the rest will follow. I would 
rather make people religious through 
their best feelings than their worst, — 
through their gratitude and affections, 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 219 

rather than their fears and calcula- 
tions of risk and punishment. 

Ernest Maltravers. 



October ^th. 
It is the persons we love that make 
beautiful the haunts we have known. 

Harold, 

October 26th. 
A man who gets in a passion with 
himself may be soon out of temper 
with others. 

Eugene Aram. 

October 26th. 
The brave man wants no charms to 
encourage him to his duty, and the 
good man scorns all warnings that 
would deter him from fulfilling it. 

Harold. 



220 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

October mth. 
There is nothing more salutary to 
active men than occasional intervals 
of repose, — when we look within, in- 
stead of without, and examine almost 
insensibly (for I hold strict and con- 
scious self-scrutiny a thing much rarer 
than we suspect) — what we have done 
— what we are capable of doing. It 
is settling, as it were, a debtor and 
creditor account with the Past, before 
we plunge into new speculations. 

Ernest Maltravers. 



October 28th. 
It is better to sow a good heart 
with kindness than a field with corn, 
for the heart's harvest is perpetual. 

Eugene Aram, 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 221 

October 29th. 
We are apt to connect the voice of 
Conscience with the stillness of mid- 
night. But I think we wrong that 
innocent hour. It is that terrible 
" NEXT MORNING," when reason is 
wide awake, upon which remorse 
fastens its fangs. Has a man gambled 
away his all, or shot his friend in a 
duel — has he committed a crime, or 
incurred a laugh — it is the next morn- 
ing, when the irretrievable past rises 
before him like a spectre ; then doth 
the churchyard of memory yield up 
its grizzly dead — then is the witching 
hour when the foul fiend within us 
can least tempt perhaps, but most tor- 
ment. 

Ernest Maltravers. 



222 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

October 30th. 
The doubt and the fear — the caprice 
and the change, which agitate the sur- 
face, swell also the tides, of passion. 
Woman, too, whose love is so much 
the creature of her imagination, al- 
ways asks something of mystery and 
conjecture in the object of her af- 
fection. It is a luxury to her to per- 
plex herself with a thousand appre- 
hensions ; and the more restlessly her 
lover occupies her mind, the more 
deeply he enthrals it. 

Eugene Aram. 



October 31st. 
By St. Dunstan ! doth it matter 
what may be the cause of quarrel. 



FE03I BULWEB LYTTON. 223 

SO long as dog or man bears himself 
bravely, with a due sense of honor and 
derring-do. 

The Last of the Barons. 



NOVEMBER. 



I^ovemher 1st. 
Me ! — Is it possible to ruin the 
young, and strong, and healthy ! 
Kuin me, with these thews and sinews ! 
— ruin me, with the education you have 
given me — thews and sinews of the 
mind! Oh no! there, Fortune is 
harmless I 

The Caxtons. 

Novemher '2d. 
What deduction from reason can 
ever apply to love ? Love is a very 
contradiction of all the elements of 
our ordinary nature, — it makes the 
proud man meek, — the cheerful, sad, 
— the high-spirited, tame ; our strong- 



228 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

est resolutions, our hardiest energy- 
fail before it. 

Eugene Aram. 

ISl'ovem'ber 3d. 
Continue to cultivate the mind, to 
sharpen by exercise the genius, to at- 
tempt to delight or to instruct your 
race ; and even supposing you fall 
short of every model you set before 
you — supposing your name moulder 
with your dust, still you will have 
passed life more nobly than the unla- 
borious herd. Grant that you win not 
that glorious accident, **a name be- 
low," how can you tell but what you 
may have fitted yourself for high des- 
tiny and employ in the world not of 
men, but of spirits ? The powers of 
the mind are things that cannot be 



FE03f BULWEB LYTTON. 229 



less immortal than the mere sense of 
identity ; their acquisitions accompany 
us through the Eternal Progress ; and 
we may obtain a lower or a higher 
grade hereafter, in proportion as we 
are more or less fitted by the exercise 
of our intellect to comprehend and ex- 
ecute the solemn agencies of God. 

Ernest 3IaUraver8, 

JVoveviher 4th. 
"A king without letters is a crowned 
ass ? " When the king is an ass, asinine 
are his subjects. Learn that a full 
head makes a weighty hand. 

Harold, 

Novemher 6th. 
Happiness will not permit us to be 
mirthful. 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 



230 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

November 6th. 
" It is destiny ! " — phrase of the weak 
human heart ! " It is destiny ! " dark 
apology for every error ! The strong 
and the virtuous admit no destiny! 
On earth, guides Conscience — in heaven 
watches God. And Destiny is but 
the phantom we invoke to silence the 
one — to dethrone the other ! 

The Last of the Barons. 

November 7th, 
"Giacomo," said Angelo, thought- 
fully, " there are some men whom we, 
of another mind and mould, can rarely 
comprehend, and never fathom. And 
of such men I have observed that a 
supreme confidence in their own for- 
tunes or their own souls, is the most 
common feature. Thus impressed, and 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 231 

thus buoyed, they rush into danger 
with a seeming madness, and from dan- 
ger soar to greatness, or sink to death. 

Bienzi. 

November 8th. 
The only gold a young man should 
covet is enough to suffice for the 
knight's spurs to his heels. 

The Last of the Barons. 

November 9th. 

" Men are often deceived," said she 

sadly, yet with a half smile ; ^' but 

women rarely, — save in love." 

Bienzi. 

November 10th. 
"Whoever is above the herd, whether 
knight or scholar, must learn to de- 
spise the hootings that follow Merit. 

The Last of the Barons. 



232 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Novemher 11th. 
God and His angels are in every 
spot where virtue trembles and resists. 

The Last of the Barons. 

Noveiiiber l^th. 
It is a dark epoch in a man's life 
when sleep forsakes him; when he 
tosses to and fro, and Thought will 
not be silenced; when the drug and 
draught are the courters of stupefac- 
tion, not sleep ; when the down pillow 
is as a knotted log ; when the eyelids 
close but with an effort, and there is a 
drag and a weight, and a dizziness in 
the eyes at morn. 

Eugene Aram. 

Novemher 13th. 
Desire and grief, and love, these are 
the young man's torments, but iliQj 



FBOM BULWEB LYTTON. 233 



are the creatures of Time; Time re- 
moves them as it brings, and the vigils 
we keep, "while the evil days come 
not," if weary, are brief and few. But 
Memory, and Care and Ambition, and 
Avarice, these are the demon-gods that 
defy the Time that fathered them. 

Eugene Aram. 

Novemher IJfth. 
The worldlier passions are the 
growth of mature years, and their 
grave is dug but in our own. As the 
dark Spirits in the northern tale, that 
watch against the coming of one of a 
brighter and holier race, lest, if he 
seize them unawares, he bind them 
prisoners in his chain, they keep ward 
at night over the entrance of that deep 



234 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

cave — the human heart — and scare 
away the angel Sleep ! 

Eugene Aram. 

November 15th. 
Amidst the grief and solitude of the 
pure, there comes, at times, a strange 
and rapt serenity — a sleep-awake — 
over which the instinct of life beyond 
the grave glides like a noiseless dream ; 
and ever that heaven that the soul 
yearns for is colored by the fancies of 
the fond human heart, — each fashion- 
ing the above from the desires unsatis- 
fied below. 

The Last of the Barons. 

JVovemher 16th. 
Better task than that of astrologers, 
and astronomers to boot ! Who among 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 235 

them can " loosen the band of Orion " ? 
— but who amongst us may not be per- 
mitted by God to have sway over the 
action and orbit of the human soul ? 

The Caxtons. 

November 17th. 
In a dominant church the genius of 
intolerance hetrays its cause; — in a 
weak and a persecuted church, the 
same genius mainly supports. 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 

November 18th. 
Terrible and eternal moral for Wis- 
dom and for Avarice, for sages and for 
kings — ever shall he who would be the 
maker of gold, breathe the air of 
death ! 

The Last of the Barons. 



236 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

NoveTnher 19th. 
The Night and the Solitude ! — these 
make the ladder round which angels 
cluster, and beneath which my spirit 
can dream of God. Oh ! none can 
know what the pilgrim feels as he 
walks on his holy course ; nursing no 
fear, and dreading no danger — for God 
is with him ! He hears the winds 
murmur glad tidings ; the woods sleep 
in the shadow of Almighty wings ; the 
stars are the Scriptures of Heaven, the 
tokens of love, and the witnesses of 
immortality. J^ight is the Pilgrim's 
day. 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 

November Wth. 
Behold ! the kingdom a man makes 
out of his own mind is the only one 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 237 

that it delighteth man to govern ! Be- 
hold, he is lord over its springs and 
movements ; its wheels revolve and 

stop at his bidding. 

The Last of the Barons. 

JSTovemher 21st. 
Freedom alone makes men sacrifice 
to each other. 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 

Novemher '2'2d. 
But while a nation has already a 
fair degree of constitutional freedom, 
I believe no struggle so perilous and 
awful as that between the aristocratic 
and the democratic principle. A peo- 
ple against a despot — that contest re- 
quires no prophet ; but the change from 
an aristocratic to a democratic com- 



238 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

monwealth is indeed the wide, un- 
bounded prospect upon which rest 
shadows, clouds, and darkness. 

Ernest Maltravers. 

NovemheT ^Sd. 
It is ever the case with stern and 
stormy spirits, that the meek ones 
which contrast them steal strangely 
into their affections. This principle of 
human nature can alone account for 
the enthusiastic devotion which the 
mild sujfferings of the Saviour awoke 
in the fiercest exterminators of the 
North. In proportion, often, to the 
warrior's ferocity, was his love to that 
Divine model, at whose sufferings he 
wept, to whose tomb he wandered 
barefoot, and whose example of com- 
passionate forgiveness he would have 



FEOM BULWEB LYTTON. 239 

thought himself the basest of men to 
follow I 

Harold, 

November ^^th. 
Charm was the characteristic of 
Lady EUinor — a charm indefinable. 
It was not the mere grace of refined 
breeding, though that went a great 
way ; it was a charm that seemed to 
spring from natural sympathy. Whom- 
soever she addressed, that person ap- 
peared for the moment to engage all 
her attention, to interest her whole 
mind. She had a gift of conversation 
very peculiar. She made what she 
said like a continuation of what was 
said to her. She seemed as if she had 
entered into your thoughts, and talked 
them aloud. Her mind was evidently 



240 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

cultivated with great care, but she was 
perfectly void of pedantry. A hint, 
an allusion sufficed to show how much 
she knew to one well instructed, with- 
out mortifying or perplexing the ig- 
norant. 

The Caxtons. 

November ^5th. 
The law is very obliging, but more 
polite than efficient. 

The Last Days of Pompeii, 

November 26th. 
Ambition, like any other passion, 
gives us unhappy moments ; but it gives 
us also an animated life. In its pur- 
suit, the minor evils of the world are 
not felt ; little crosses, little vexations 
do not disturb us. Like men who walk 
in sleep, we are absorbed in one pow- 



FE03I BULWEB LYTTON. 241 



erful dream, and do not even know the 
obstacles in our way, or the dangers 
that surround us : in a word we have 
no private life. All that is merely 
domestic, the anxiety and the loss 
which fret other men, which blight the 
happiness of other men, are not felt by 
us : we are wholly public ; — so that if 
we lose much comfort, we escape much 

care. 

Eugene Aram. 

I^ovemher 27tli. 
From this record of error he drew 
forth the grand eras of truth. He 
showed how earnest men never think 
in vain, though their thoughts may be 
errors. He proved how, in vast cycles, 
age after age, the human mind marches 
on — like the ocean, receding here, but 



242 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

there advancing ; how from the specu- 
lations of the Greeks sprang all true 
philosophy ; how from the institutions 
of the Koman rose all durable systems 
of government ; how from the robust 
follies of the north came the glory of 
chivalry, and the modern delicacies of 
honor, and the sweet, harmonizing in- 
fluences of woman. 

The Gaxtons. 

J^ominber 28th. 
Time had been, indeed, at work ; but, 
with the same exulting bound and 
happy voice, that little brook leaped 
along its way. Ages hence, may the 
course be as glad, and the murmur as 
full of mirth ! They are blessed things, 
those remote and unchanging streams ! 
— they fill us with the same love as if 



FEOM BULWEE LYTTON. 243 



they were living creatures !— and in a 
green corner of the world there is one 
that, for my part, I never see without 
forgetting myself to tears— tears that 
I would not lose for a king's ransom ; 
tears that no other sight or sound could 
call from their source ; tears of what 
affection, what soft regret ; tears that 
leave me, for days afterward, a better 
and a kinder man ! 

Eugene Aram. 

Nommher Wth. 
I have noted myself in life, that there 
are objects, senseless as that mould of 
iron, which, if we labor at them, wind 
round our hearts as if they were flesh 
and blood. So some men love learn- 
ing, others glory, others power. 

The La8t of the Barons, 



244 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

JVovemher SOth. 
Better hew wood and draw water, 
then attach ourselves devotedly to an 
art in which we have not the capacity 
to excel. ... It is to throw away the 
healthful objects of life for a diseased 
dream, — worse than the Kosicrucians, 
it is to make a sacrifice of all human 
beauty for the smile of a sylphid, that 
never visits us but in visions. 

Ernest Maltravera, 



DECEMBER. 



December 1st. 
Examine not, O child of man ! — ex- 
amine not that mysterious melancholy 
with the hard eyes of thy reason ; thou 
canst not impale it on the spikes of thy 
thorny logic, nor describe its enchanted 
circle by problems conned from thy 
schools. Borderer thyself of two 
worlds — the Dead and the Living — 
give thine ear to the tones, bow thy 
soul to the shadows that steal, in the 
Season of Change, from the dim Border 
Land. 

The Caxtons. 

Decemher '2d. — Tlie Creed of an An- 
cient Egyptian. 
Of that which created the world, 
we know, we can know, nothing, save 



248 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

these attributes — power and unvarying 
regularity : — stern, crushing, relentless 
regularity — heeding no individual cases 
— rolling — sweeping — burning on ; — no 
matter what scattered hearts, severed 
from the general mass, fall ground and 
scorched beneath its wheels. 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 

December 3d. 
Thus, when a great man, who has en- 
grossed our thoughts, our conjectures, 
our homage, dies, a gap seems suddenly 
left in the world ; a wheel in the 
mechanism of our own being appears 
abruptly stilled ; a portion of ourselves, 
and not our worst portion, for how 
many pure, high, generous sentiments 
it contains, dies with him ! 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 



FROM BULWER LYTTON, 249 

December Ifth. — A Loveless Match. 

Thou dost not love. Bid farewell for- 
ever to thy fond dreams of a life more 
blessed than that of mortals. From 
the stormy sea of the future are blotted 
out eternally for thee — Calyph and her 
Golden Isle. Thou canst no more 
paint on the dim canvas of thy desires 
the form of her with whom thou 
couldst dwell forever. Thou hast 
been unfaithful to thine own ideal — 
thou hast given thyself forever and 
forever to another — thou hast re- 
nounced hope — thou must live as in a 
prison, with a being with whom thou 
hast not the harmory of love. 

Ernest Maltravers. 

December 5th. — A Love Match. 
Attest the betrothal of these young 



250 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

hearts, O ye Powers that draw nature 
to nature by spells which no galdra 
can trace, and have wrought in the 
secrets of creation no mystery so per- 
fect as love, — Attest it, thou temple, 
thou altar! — attest it, O sun and O 
air! While the forms are divided, 
may the souls cling together — sorrow 
with sorrow, and joy with joy. And 
when, at length, bride and bridegroom 
are one, — O stars, may the trouble 
with which ye are charged have ex- 
hausted its burthen ; may no danger 
molest, and no malice disturb, but, 
over the marriage-bed, shine in peace, 
O ye stars ! 

Harold. 

Decemher 6th. 
In that love my spirit awoke, and 



FBOM BULWEB LYTTON. 251 



was baptized ; every thought that has 
risen from earth, and lost itself in 
heaven, was breathed into my heart by 
thee! Thy creature and thy slave, 
hadst thou tempted me to sin, sin had 
seemed hallowed by thy voice; but 
thou saidst, " True love is virtue," and 
so I worshipped virtue in loving thee. 
Strengthened, purified, by thy bright 
companionship, from thee came the 
strength to resign thee— from thee the 
refuge under the wings of God — from 
thee the firm assurance that our union 
yet shall be— not as our poor Hilda 
dreams, on the perishable earth,— but 
there! oh, there! yonder by the 
celestial altars, in the land in which 
all spirits are filled with love. 

Harold. 



252 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Decemher 7th. 
Kill my labor and thou destroyest 

VCLQ 

The Last of the Barons. 

December 8th. 
Look round on Nature — behold the 
only company that humbles me not — 
except the dead whose souls speak to 
us from the immortality of books. 
These herbs at your feet, I know their 
secrets — I watch the mechanism of 
their life ; the winds — they have taught 
me their language ; the stars — I have 
unravelled their mysteries ; and these, 
the creatures and ministers of God — 
these I offend not by my mood — to 
them I utter my thoughts, and break 
forth into my dreams, without reserve 
and without fear. 

Eugene Aram. 



FB03I BULWEB LYTTON. 253 



Decemher 9th. 
The tyrant thinks he is free, because 
he commands slaves : the meanest 
peasant in a free state is more free 
than he is. 

Bienzi. 

December 10th. 
" And if, O stars ! " murmured Mal- 
travers, from the depths of his excited 
lieart — " if I have been insensible to 
your solemn beauty — if the Heaven 
and the Earth had been to me but as 
air and clay — if I were one of a dull 
and dim-eyed herd — I might live on, 
and drop into the grave from the ripe- 
ness of unprofitable years. It is be- 
cause I yearn for the great objects of 
an immortal being, that life shrinks 
and shrivels up like a scroll. Away ! 



254 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

I will not listen to these human and 
material monitors, and consider life 
as a thing greater than the things that 
I would live for. My choice is made, 
glory is more persuasive than the 
grave." 

Ernest Maltravers. 



December 11th. 
As courage was the first virtue that 
honor called forth — the first virtue 
from which all safety and civilization 
proceed — so we do right to keep that 
one virtue at least clear and unsullied 
from all the money-making, mercenary, 
pay-me-in-cash abominations which are 
the vices, not the virtues, of the civili- 
zation it has produced. 

The Caxtona. 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 255 

December 12th. 
There is a terrible disconnection be- 
tween the author and the man — the 
author's life and the man's life — the 
eras of visible triumph may be those 
of the most intolerable, though unre- 
vealed and unconjectured anguish. 
The book that delighted us to compose 
may first appear in the hour when all 
things under the sun are joyless. 

Ernest Maltravers. 

December 13th. — Ars Longa Vita 
Brevis. 

A vast empire rises on my view, 
greater than that of Caesars and con- 
querors — an empire durable and uni- 
versal in the souls of men, that time 
itself cannot overthrow ; and Death 
marches with me, side by side, and the 



256 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

skeleton hand waves me back to the 
nothingness of common men. 

Ernest Maltravers. 

December IJ/ih. 
"Your Holiness knows well," said 
the Cardinal, " that for the multitude 
of men there are two watchwords of 
war — Liberty and Keligion." 

Bienzi, 

Decemher 15th. 
A young man's ambition is but van- 
ity, — it has no definite aim, — it plays 
with a thousand toys. As with one 
passion, so with the rest. In youth, 
love is ever on the Aving, but, like the 
birds in April, it hath not yet built its 
nest. With so long a career of sum- 
mer and hope before it, the disappoint- 
ment of to-day is succeeded by the 



FE03I BULWER LYTTON. 257 

novelty of to-morrow — and the sun 
that advances to the noon but dries up 
its fervent tears. But when we have 
arrived at that epoch of life, — when, 
if the light fail us — if the last rose 
wither, — we feel that the loss cannot 
be retrieved, and that the frost and 
the darkness are at hand, — Love be- 
comes to us a treasure that we watch 
over and hoard with a miser's care. 
Our youngest-born affection is our 
darling and our idol, the fondest 
pledge of the Past, the most cherished 
of our hopes for the Future. A cer- 
tain melancholy that mingles with our 
joy the possession, only enhances its 
charm. We feel ourselves so depend- 
ent on it for all that is yet to come. 
Our other barks — our gay galleys of 



258 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

pleasure — our stately argosies of pride 
— have been swallowed up by the re- 
morseless wave. On this last vessel 
we freight our all — to its frail tene- 
ment we commit ourselves. The star 
that guides it is our guide, — and in the 
tempest that menaces, we behold our 

own doom ! 

Alice, 

December 16th. 
It was one of those listless panics, 
those strange fits of indifference and 
lethargy which often seize upon a peo- 
ple who make liberty a matter of im- 
pulse and caprice, to whom it has be- 
come a catchword, who have not long 
enjoyed all its rational, and sound, and 
practical, and blessed results; who 
have been affrayed by the storms that 



FBOM BULWEB LYTTON. 259 

herald its dawn ; — a people such as is 
common to the south: such as even 
the north has known; such as, had 
Cromwell lived a year longer, even 
England might have seen; and, in- 
deed, in some measure, such a reac- 
tion from popular enthusiasm to pop- 
ular indifference England did see, 
when her children madly surrendered 
the fruits of a bloody war, with- 
out reserve, without foresight, to the 
lewd pensioner of Louis, and the royal 
murderer of Sydney. To such prostra- 
tion of soul, such blindness of intellect, 
even the noblest people will be sub- 
jected, when liberty, which should be 
the growth of ages, spreading its roots 
through the strata of a thousand cus- 
toms, is raised, the exotic of an hour. 



260 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

and (like the tree and Dryad of an- 
cient fable) flourishes and withers with 
the single spirit that protects it. 

Bienzi, 

December 17th. 
What has been the use of those ac- 
quirements ? Has he benefited man- 
kind by them ? Show me the poet — 
the historian — the orator, and I will 
yield to none of you ; no, not to Made- 
line herself in homage of their genius : 
but the mere creature of books — the 
dry and sterile collector of other men's 
learning — no — no. What should I ad- 
mire in such a machine of literature, 
except a waste of perseverance ? 

Eugene Aram, 

December 18th, 
Love, in its first dim and imperfect 



FROM BULWER LYTTON. 261 

shape, is but imagination concentrated 
on one object. It is a genius of the 
heart, resembling that of the intellect ; 
it appeals to, it stirs up, it evokes the 
sentiments and sympathies that lie 
most latent in our nature. Its sigh is 
the spirit that moves over the ocean, 
and rouses the Anadyomene into life. 
Therefore is it, that mind produces 
affections deeper than those of exter- 
nal form ; therefore it is, that women 
are worshippers of glory, which is the 
palpable and visible representative of 
a genius whose operations they cannot 

always comprehend. 

Alice. 

December 19th. 
Genius has so much in common with 
love — the imagination that animates 



262 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

one is so much the property of the 
other — that there is not a surer sign of 
the existence of genius than the love 
that it creates and bequeaths. It pen- 
etrates deeper than the reason — it 
binds a nobler captive than the fancy. 
As the sun upon the dial, it gives to 
the human heart both its shadow and 
its light. Nations are its worshippers 
and wooers ; and Posterity learns from 
its oracles to dream — to aspire — to 

adore ! 

Alice. 

December Wth. 
If a man is called a genius, it means 
that he is to be thrust out of all the 
good things in this life. He is not fit 
for anything but a garret ! Put a ge- 
nius into office ! — make a genius a 



FB03I BULWER LYTTON. 263 

bishop ! or a lord chancellor ! — the 
world would be turned topsyturvy ! 
You see that you are quite astonished, 
that a genius can be even a county 
magistrate, and know the difference 
between a spade and a poker ! In 
fact, a genius is supposed to be the 
most ignorant, impracticable, good-for- 
nothing, do-nothing, sort of thing that 
ever walked upon two legs. Mediocre 
men have the monopoly of the loaves 
and fishes ; and even when talent does 
rise in life, it is a talent that only dif- 
fers from mediocrity by being more 

energetic and bustling. 

Alice. 

Decemher '21st. 
His was the age when we most sen- 
sitively enjoy the mere sense of exist- 



264 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

ence ; when the face of J^ature, and a 
passive conviction of the benevolence 
of our Great Father, suffice to create a 
serene and ineffable happiness, which 
rarely visits us till we have done with 
the passions; — till memories, if more 
alive than heretofore, are yet mel- 
lowed in the hues of time, and Faith 
softens into harmony all their as- 
perities and harshness ; — till nothing 
within us remains to cast a shadow 
over the things without ; — and on the 
verge of life, the Angels are nearer to 
us than of yore. There is an old ago 
which has more youth of heart than 
youth itself ! 

Alice, 

December 22d. 
Oh, Youth! begin not thy career 



FB03I BULWEB LYTTON. 265 

too soon, and let one passion succeed 
in its due order to another — so that 
every season of life may have its ap- 
propriate pursuit and charm ! 

Alice, 



December ^Sd, 
The fact is, that in civilization we 
behold a splendid aggregate; — litera- 
ture and science, wealth and luxury, 
commerce and glory ; but we see not 
the million victims crushed beneath 
the wheels of the machine — the health 
sacrij&ced — the board breadless — the 
jails filled — the hospitals reeking — 
the human life poisoned in every 
spring, and poured forth like water! 
Neither do we remember all the steps, 
marked by desolation, crime, and 



266 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

bloodshed, by which this barren sum- 
mit has been reached. 

Alice. 

December 2Jf.th. 
But the discontent does not prey 
upon the springs of life ; it is the dis- 
content of hope, not of despair; it calls 
forth faculties, energies, and passions, 
in which there is more joy than sor- 
row. It is this desire which makes 
the citizen in private life an anxious 
father, a careful master, an active, and 
therefore not an unhappy, man. You 
allow that individuals can effect indi- 
vidual good : this very restlessness, 
this very discontent with the exact 
place that he occupies, makes the citi- 
zen a benefactor in his narrow circle. 
Commerce, better than charity, feeds 



FB03I BULWEB LYTTON. 267 



the hungry, and clothes the naked. 
Ambition, better than brute affection, 
gives education to our children, and 
teaches them the love of industry, the 
pride of independence, the respect for 
others and themselves ! ^^^^^ 

December ^5th.— Christmas Day. 

Was it not worthy of a God to de- 
scend to these dim valleys, in order to 
clear up the clouds gathered over the 
dark mount beyond— to satisfy the 
doubts of sages— to convert specula- 
tion into certainty— by example to 
point out the rules of life— by revela- 
tion to solve the enigma of the grave 

and to prove that the soul did not 

yearn in vain when it dreamed of an 

immortality? „, , . ^ 

"^ The Last Days of Pompeii. 



268 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

December 26th. 
"Come," said the Nazarene (as he 
perceived the effect he had produced) 
" come to the humble hall in which we 
meet — a select and a chosen few ; 
listen there to our prayers ; note the 
sincerity of our repentant tears ; 
mingle in our simple sacrifice — not of 
victims, nor of garlands, but offered 
by white-robed thoughts upon the altar 
of the heart. The flowers that we lay 
there are imperishable — they bloom 
over us when we are no more ; nay, 
they accompany us beyond the grave, 
they spring up beneath our feet in 
heaven, they delight us with an eternal 
odor, for they are of the soul, they 
partake of its nature; these offerings 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 269 

are temptations overcome, and sins 
repented." 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 

December '27th. 
Thou comest amongst us as an 
examiner, mayest thou remain a con- 
vert ! Our religion ? you behold it ! 
Yon cross our sole image, yon scroll 
the mysteries of our Csere and Eleusis ! 
Our morality ? it is in our lives ! — 
sinners we all have been; who now 
can accuse us of a crime ? we have bap- 
tized ourselves from the past. Think 
not that this is of us, it is of God. 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 

Decemher 28th. 
Apaecides had already learned that 
the faith of the philosophers was not 



270 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

that of the herd ; that if they secretly 
professed a creed in some diviner 
power, it was not the creed which 
they thought it wise to impart to the 
community. He had already learned, 
that even the priest ridiculed what he 
preached to the people — that the no- 
tions of the few and the many were 
never united. But, in this new faith, 
it seemed to him that philosopher, 
priest, and people, the expounders of 
the religion and its followers, were 
alike accordant : they did not speculate 
and debate upon immortality, they 
spoke of it as a thing certain and 
assured; the magnificence of the 
promise dazzled him — its consolations 
soothed. 

The Last Days of Pompeii. 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 271 

December 29th. 

Yes, he was a rare character, that 
village priest ! Would it have been 
better for Christianity, or the State, if 
they had made him a bishop? And 
yet, alas! so do we confound things 
spiritual with things temporal, that 
nine readers out of ten would be glad 
to find, at the end of these volumes, 
that the poor curate had been " prop- 
erly rewarded for his deserts." 

Do lawn sleeves, a powdered wig, 
and the title of " My Lord the Bishop," 
make more beautiful on the mountain- 
tops the feet of him who bringeth glad 
tidings ? 

Alice. 

December 30th. 
Beauty, thou art twice blessed ! thou 



272 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

blessest the gazer and the possessor; 
often, at once the effect and the cause 
of goodness ! — A sweet disposition — a 
lovely soul — an affectionate nature — 
will speak in the eyes — the lips — the 
brow — and become the cause of beauty. 
On the other hand, they who have a 
gift that commands love, a key that 
opens all hearts, are ordinarily in- 
clined to look with happy eyes upon 
the world — to be cheerful and serene — 
to hope and to confide. There is more 
wisdom than the vulgar dream of, in 
our admiration of a fair face. 

Alice, 



December 31st. 
What is the Earth to Infinity — what 
its duration to the Eternal ? Oh, how 



FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 273 

much greater is the soul of one man 
than the vicissitudes of the whole 
globe. 

Zanoni. 



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